All Forum Posts by: Brad Larsen

@Account Closed  Joel - sorry for the late reply, but yes - $1,000 sounds reasonable.  In our business, we offer an Eviction Guarantee for a small fee per month.  We have laid out what an eviction could cost with the below chart.  Hope this helps!

@Ian Hoover  Here is a post that may help:  https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/385...

Take care out there!

@Liz Garcia @Jonatan Barbera   Jonathan would be an excellent resource to find the rental for you! We know and work well with him and his team. 

@April Rodgers April - that is a long conversation on where to look for homes in South Texas....specifically San Antonio. The zip code list is long. However, a price point for a solid SFH investment would be around $150k. That type of home would / should rent for $1,300 or more. Also, if you can stay outside of Bexar county - you pay less property tax. But, you may have more of a drive.

This conversation on here could last 10 paragraphs as there is a lot of information to review.  

Find a good buyer's agent - let them help you find a solid home to turn into an investment and go from there.  You can search out more of the rest when you hit the ground.  It's super tough to do from a distance.  

Good luck!

Try Rent Manager or Appfolio.  We use Appfolio, but if the pain of switching was not so awful and expensive, we would be on Rent Manager.  Check them out.

Good luck out there!

The handyman ad hoc concept is fine, until no one can reach the handyman - or that handyman injures himself on the job....or worse yet....the work that handyman does injures your tenants.  My point being the level of separation between you and your tenants and that the handyman must be organized by you...keeping you from focusing on finding your next investment. 

A good property management company would carry significant amounts of insurance to cover themselves (and you) all while vetting their contractors to do the same.  Reliability and Risk Mitigation go hand in hand there versus trying to hire the small guy in a truck to fix something. 

So, I may be biased, but I see the darker side of tenants every day and I can only imagine that a tenant friendly state with an ever increasingly litigious society can only lead down a slow dark path. 

Hire a good property management company affiliated with NARPM and let them take on that liability.  

Good luck out there!

@Account Closed We hold our personally owned rental homes in a Series LLC. The benefits are yet to be determined outside of the price to establish it. A regular stand alone LLC would run about $1,000 to set up....and the Series LLC would be around $300 to add another sub inside of it.

Seeing your point, and knowing the difference, I would think you want to check out some of the more aggressive lenders in town like Jefferson Bank, or Frost (Although Frost not so much).  The credit unions tend to be a bit conservative.  

One of our biggest owners uses a bank in Austin and they run him like a commercial deal. He owns around 25 or so SFH's and we manage a large portion of those. All N I C E homes. He has a standing order with that bank for what he wants to buy and they look at the numbers on ONE unit as if it were part of 100 units.

I can see about getting that POC to that bank if you are interested.  Message me off line.  

Take care!

@Andy Kurtz  Andy - when you find the buyer's agent you like - consider us for management.  Check us out online.  

We could never - EVER - reconcile Propertyware with our bank books.  (Quickbooks).  

Example:  We would charge a $1.00 convenience fee for online payments for rent.  Propertyware dumps in $127 dollars into your account for this.  Where does this credit???  There are many other examples like this. 

I attempted numerous times to seek their highest level of assistance and it all failed.  I must have gone through 3-4 hours of consulting with them, my CPA, and my book keepers.....but none of the talking made their system work any better.  At one point, I recall them telling me this will never reconcile.  

We ended up starting an entirely new set of books with a new bank - and new software - Appfolio.  

If it was not such a giant pain to switch, I would be with RentManager.  They have a lot of good stuff.  However, the pain and expense to switch does not make us any more money at the end of the day.  Don't fix it if it ain't broken! 

Take care out there! 

@Anthony Caiazzo I would validate your question that it is worth joining SABOR in order to have access to the MLS. You can do comps, and set up searches for particular home formulas you are looking for. If a MF unit comes up meeting your criteria, you would be alerted and can jump on it with a look and possible offer. By far, the MLS is the absolute strongest tool you can have.

Robert and Kim Kiyosaki always said to look at 100 homes before making an offer on one. Their point was to get education on what the market will bear. Realtor.com is limited. The MLS through SABOR is rather amazing.

Good luck out there!