All Forum Posts by: Christopher B.

Floating is the way to go imo. Just a better product and I would worry more about a glue down in a wet area than floating. 

Doing all the work for 30% of the profit is not a good deal for you is not advisable. Considering there is plenty of money out there at this time you shouldn't need to go below a 50/50 split. If you are experienced then I don't see why you should even give-up that much. Go to a bank or HML, both scenarios will likely be cheaper for you. If you want to establish a partnership with this private lender and are willing to give a little more to create the relationship that is understandable but remember that what you give now will be expected again in the future.

What is the price range of the house and what are you looking for from the designer? 

I wish I could only sleep 4hrs per day. I don't sleep well so 6-8hrs is what I need most nights. I'm trying to get down to 6hrs per night though

 Good points. I thought about this a bit after I posted as well. While I know property mgmt companies do it here everyone should look up the laws before doing so. 

 Don't know much about other state laws but belive you have heard wrong. Evicting tenants here is not a difficult process 

That's a good deal. Wish I could find a plumber to offer something similar. I recently had a plumber want $700 to change a toilet out in a rental, insanity. 

Another idea is to build the renters insurance charge into your lease. Can call it a Building Fee, then enroll the tenant in your renters insurance program.  This will ensure they have renters insurance and you don't have to keep track if theirs is up to date.

Also, put your security deposits into an interest bearing account. Free money. 

@Dale Lotts Yesa, let's compare notes. I am just now working through some of these things so it would be helpful. 

I looked into a few options and narrowed it down to Cozy, Buildium, and Rentec. I think they are all good products.Most important to me is I wanted to settle on a complete system that could handle my properties end-to-end and hopefully not have to migrate again in the future. Hopefully they don't raise costs and force me into other options. 

We change filters quarterly and I am always forgetting the sizes, it can turn quick tasks into hours of work. Something buildium offers but I haven't set-up yet, is appliance tracking. So you enter your model #'s, warranty info, etc and it keeps it in the system. Not a huge deal but I like their mindset and it makes me curious of what future upgrades they will make to the system. 

I'm not sure about outsourcing the showings. What about setting up cameras and automatic doorlocks at turnover, collect info and give mobile showings? Can watch, maybe even talk to them while they are in the property and then lock the doors when they leave.  

I'm working on the same things right now. One thought, if you are already paying $35/month for payment processing for 8 units you can move to a pm software like rentec or buildium for only $10 more and get the same feature plus many more, like a resident portal for maintenance requests, payments, document sharing, etc. They also offer digital lease signing built-in to the system which is nice. I use Buildium, it costs $5/lease but I just built that into the application fees. ACH is .50 and the cost is paid by the tenant. Same cost as a stamp, so pretty easy sell.

It's always a work in progress but some things I've begun working on: 

1)ACH payments

2) PM software; website, online applications, digital leases, maintenance requests through resident portal. Auto reminders for lease renewals, quarterly/annual preventative maintenance programs. For maintenance reminders I have created a checklist in excel and attached it to my reminders fot easy reference. 

3) Communications; I've built email/letter templates from simple lease renewal reminders to a welcome letter for new residents reminding them of policies, procedures, and provides helpful info. The templates autofill with unit and resident names. I have also set-up automatic rent payment email reminders that are sent to each tenant at the end of the month. 

4) It's a work in progress but I am building a unit materials and info document. I attach these to each property in my software for easy reference. I can quickly look what size filter, paint color, type of tile, etc for each unit. I have moved to std materials for each unit but it's never perfect. This helps maintenance and turnover times. 

5) Showings; I set-up an open house for showings or appts back to back. Still playing with this but it has saved me time vs giving individual showings. I also collect a bit of data and outline all of my qualifications and fees before showing the units to pre-screen tenants and eliminate tire kickers. 

I've been working on this off and on for the last couple weeks. A lot of it is setting standard procedures and building systems around them. I'll use trial and error and by the end of 2018 have an exact system (documented) to make growth easier and eventually hand-off to an in-house manager. 

I honestly for sorry for you.