All Forum Posts by: Ryan Detig

@Victor Jernigan  I am looking for general market information.  Currently looking at a multifamily property (less than 20 units).  It is currently listed at around a 6 cap and while I don't know the market very well, the little research I have done seems to lead to a more accurate cap rate for small multifamily being 7-9.  

Anyone have any recommendations for an apartment appraiser in the Knoxville TN or Maryville TN area?

Jon Reed that is correct. They give me a paper application filled out. I️ use that for references and job info for my due diligence. The online part I send them is just for the background eviction and criminal checks. They don’t provide other info online they just consent to have the checks done and they pay for it and it gets sent to me.

@Harry Williams If you want to try to move from excel to something a little more automated you could try mint.com.  I currently have 6 rentals and am on my 3rd flip and I use mint.com to track expenses for the rentals and make sure the flips stay on budget.  Mint.com mixed with google drive for invoices/receipts makes tax time pretty simple.  Also it is free so that's a plus.   Also to directly answer you question, I probably log into mint once a week during a flip to make sure every transaction is placed in the correct budget/category.  If I don't have a flip going on then I might log in once a month when rent is paid. 

@Clint LeClair  Glad to see you are trying to help reduce maintenance costs and be more efficient.  You might want to check out Google Hangouts.  From what I know, I think it can do everything you are wanting to do.  The only problem I see is if your tenant/repair man does not have a gmail account.  This would be an easy free fix.  Either way i'm not trying to discourage your creativity, i'm just letting you know there might be something out there that could work for you and save you some time/effort.  

@Buddy Holmes I think there is some confusion here.  I don't have a separate Mint account for each rental.  I have one mint user name for my personal budget and I have one other mint user name for my rentals and flips.  I have my business mint account link to my business bank account (I have one account for all my rentals) and the bank account I use for flipping properties (this is separate from my rental bank account).  I then use different budgets and tags within my business mint account to keep track of all of the spending for each rental and flip independently.  That way come tax time I can just filter by each properties budget and export to excel.  

Also, I wanted to comment regarding your statement "mint pulls all bank accounts in any given bank".  While this is true when you first set up mint, you can go to account settings and change it so that only the accounts you want get data pulled when you log in.  For example if I have 4 wellsfargo accounts but 2 of them are business, I can go into mint, and change the account settings to "closed" for the 2 non business accounts and when I log in, mint will not pull that data.  I just wanted to make sure you were aware of that as having it pull all the info would be very very confusing.  

@Justin Wilcox  I use Tenantcloud.com.  It costs me $9 per month and it is free for tenants to pay online via dwolla payments. I have 4 tenants using them and have had minimal complaints.   Tenant cloud has other options but not sure if they are free to the tenant. 

@Adam Rey  Let me preface this with the fact that I am currently a Landlord of 8 doors.  I have also been the tenant in the situation that you are talking about, kind of.  After college my job moved me from the east cost to CA.  I got a 15k moving bonus and when talking to the property manager I offered to pay 6 months rent ahead of time to wave the deposit.  They agreed and it all worked out.  They actually charged me 250 cleaning fee when I left and I left it clean but since I paid no deposit I did not have to (chose not to) pay.   Now that I am a landlord I would be a little more concerned but I don't think I would automatically write them off.  What I would probably do now is see how long the average eviction takes in your area.  Lets say it takes 3 months.  I would tell them since you don't have income that is 3x the rent, here is what we can do.  You can do a 9 month lease with them and make them pay 3 times the deposit with the stipulation that they have to do another application after 9 months and provide proof of 3x rent.  This would be a total of 12 months rent presumably so it is not really any more than they are expecting to pay.  This way after 9 months if they stop paying or cannot provide proof of income , you have 3 months deposit to pull from if eviction occurs.  If they provide proof of income and all checks out, then it goes month to month and they keep paying.  Obviously you will need to make sure none of this breaks any of your local laws (deposit limits etc) as I am not familiar with Massachusetts property law.    

@Robin Searle  Glad to hear you had such a good experience the first time around with your tenant.  I personally like open houses because it minimizes my time.  I can show multiple people the house and be done in an hour or so.  I usually give out applications and an info sheet and they can fill it out onsite or at home and email it to me.  I use mysmartmove.com and set it so that the tenant pays for the fee themselves.  That way all I have to do if there is multiple is review the report before moving forward to calling employers and past landlords.  If I get multiple applicants, I look through their application and make sure they are not automatically disqualified (no evictions in the past 7 years, 3x the rent in income, no pets on my insurance's "no pet" list ect).  If they look good then I will send them the request to process there background/eviction check.  I don't let them do a background/eviction check (costs them money) if I already know they will not qualify so that I can at least sleep at night.  

I don't think you should limit yourself to only military.  It is a pain to deal with the potential headache of multiple applicants and open houses, but that 3-4 hours of stress once is way better to me than a year or more of headaches because a bad tenant was chosen.  

What you might want to do is ask your current tenant if she knows anyone that is looking for a place and let your tenant market for you at the military base she is working. Obviously they will go through the same screening process as any other tenant but you might not even have to advertise if your current tenant brings you the next tenant.

Finally, if I know I have multiple people interested that meet my criteria, I always try to get them all to submit an application and complete background check so that I have multiple applicants to choose from.  I always keep track of who submits and application first but the nice thing about mysmartmove.com is that they give an actual "renter" number so it makes it very easy for me to not have to deal with discrimination issues because I pick the "Most Qualified" tenant which is documented by mysmartmove.com's reports.

@Walter Ciucevich  Congrats on using private lenders.  I think the answer to your questions completely depends on the relationship you have with the lender.  If they are close friends/family, the conversation can be a more open one regarding what they "need" to make it work for them.  If it is more of an acquaintance type relationship then I think you have to run the numbers and bring your best (or close to best) offer to the table.  That is if the first meeting goes far enough to actually talk that detailed.  The first meeting might be more of a "this is what I have done" and "here is where I see myself going" conversation to see if they are interested in that.  If you are experienced and have other lending options and they are just  "another" lending option then I would keep it low (6%-10%) interest rate with 1-2 points.  If they are your only option to do deals other than hard money lenders than maybe you bring them in and do interest plus a % profit or increase interest and points.  If they are close family and friends you can probably get away with 8%-10% interest with no points.  I currently have 6 people that will 8-10% with no points depending on the deal.  I don't think you will have much luck with percentage of the profit with no interest type of loan unless they are really close family/friend that is wanting to help you out.  I would also not even bring that up unless you are pretty experienced or they are pretty experienced.  Ethically you should have some financial responsibility to take care of your lenders and if you and they don't have any experience, you are setting yourself up to fail with someone else's money.  I would have a hard time sleeping at night.  If on the other hand this person is very experienced then you could partner with them and split it 50/50 and you could have them help you learn.