All Forum Posts by: Peter Lohmann

Here's the updated numbers for April, May and June!

Uh, yeah. Of course it's BS. If there was room for rent increases, they would have already been raised. In general, you can take all the "information" given to you by sellers (and their agents) and throw it directly into the garbage.

Vacancy in those types of neighborhoods (C and D class) will be high. I would pencil in ~8% minimum (8 weeks of vacancy every 2 years).

I also recommend Donny and Mitch and refer to them often, if a client isn't a good fit for us. Donny's group is comfortable taking on lower-end properties that many others (including us) shy away from, and Mitch is happy to take on single-family accidental landlords clients (which we don't).

 No, nobody.

 Yes, they are a 3rd party who handles usage and billing. Nothing changes with your city bill - you still receive and pay that quarterly. Guardian bills tenants monthly for their usage and the tenants pay that bill to you. You get a separate (small) bill from Guardian for their service, but the cost is incorporated into the billing rate that Guardian charges the tenants.

We manage several hundred multifamily units in and around Columbus, and have tried every different way to bill water - included in rent, split among tenants, and sub-metered. Our recommendation is sub-metering, for the following reasons:

-You will get monthly reads instead of quarterly, so any leaks or other abnormal usage can be addressed faster (this one benefit alone could save you thousands on a water bill). Even when vacant you'll be able to see what's going on with water usage. Lifesaver in winter especially.
-Because it's more fair for the tenants (they are billed for their exact usage), they are more likely to renew their lease and/or just behave better.
-It's essentially free for landlords (at least with Guardian) once it's set up, because the cost of the service is included in the tenant's monthly water bill.
-Using the city water bill, it's an issue at move-in and move-out to prorate usage since the tenancy won't line up with the billing periods. With submetering, you can provide readings at move-in and move-out and thus bill the tenants precisely for their usage.

Many MF properties in Columbus already have submeters, take a careful look and you may find old submeters not hooked up and either inoperable or simply not in use. Get them up and running; you'll be happy you did.

Congrats guys! You've got a fantastic property there!

Once again, thx for the mention guys!

Got your message through our website Danny - giving you a call now.

Thanks @Robert Ellis and @Remington Lyman, appreciate you thinking of us.