All Forum Posts by: Rafael Saldana

Thanks for the welcome @Steven Soto @Paul Timmins !

I'm taking your tips and advice to heart. 

See you around the forums!

Hi Chris,

Having only one building and a great accountant who helped me get setup, I use Quickbooks online to run my books. With that I signed up for Quickbooks payment processing and accept ACH/Electronic Checks. The signup took less than a week to get approved and so far it works great. I pay $.50 per payment and no monthly fee.

The one thing I will point out is that when I create the invoices on Quickbooks and send to the two tenants I have doing online payments, there is no way to turn off acceptance of credit cards on the invoice. If they pay by credit card it's 3.40% + $.25! I have told them they CAN NOT pay with credit card and that if they do we will have a serious problem and so far it has worked fine. BUT, if it was more than these two tenants paying I would probably not risk it. 

Does that make sense? I know it's a bit of a band-aid but it has worked well so far. I'm going to track this thread to see what everyone else suggests. 

Good luck!

Thanks @James Syed . I'm slowly realizing just how much information there is on here. I have a lot of catching up to do!

Thanks @James Wise 

Hi everyone! 

This website has so far been incredibly eye opening. I am so excited to start putting to use some of the things I have learned so far.

My experience as a real estate investor is limited but I have set as a goal to increase it significantly in the next 12 months. Currently, I own and manage a 6 unit apartment building in Miami, FL and have put together a small pot to tackle my first fix-and-flip. 

While I have owned several businesses in the past, this is my first venture into real estate investments and am both excited and a little nervous. To get more comfortable I just completed my real estate sales associate training and hope to be licensed by January. But not having any sort of background in real estate or construction the aspect that most intimidates me is the actual fixing aspect of fix-and-flip. I know what good electrical and plumbing looks like, but when you start talking about tearing down walls and changing windows I really have no clue yet.

A good family friend is introducing me to a friend of his who does a fair amount of investing in the area. I hope that I can make myself useful to him somehow in exchange for a little guidance (any tips on how to do this are greatly appreciated). 

I look forward to getting to know all of you in the coming months!

Best,

Rafa

I have some experience with one Section 8 tenant in South Florida. What I have found is that the tenant will sometimes say things about the program or conversations they have had with the Section 8 office that aren't quite accurate. Have you talked to someone at Section 8 about it? What did they say to you?

On the same token, the tenant might be giving Section 8 the wrong information. Going to the reps at Section 8 with a good and professional attitude has served me really well. If they see you're not out to take advantage of the tenant but that you just have a legitimate issue with their decision they have been very open to working with me and usually see things my way.