All Forum Posts by: Shalin Patel

Hi BP folks, I was looking for some insight.

I am about to put an offer on Unit B of a duplex that during our showing there was standing water on the side of the unit.  The unit sits on a slab. The other unit did not have any water issues. The neighborhood is multiple duplexes and is governed by a condo association who supposedly maintains the exterior and roofs.

I am not sure if I should negotiate the cost of regrading/French drain into the initial offer or wait until inspection. The listing agent was unaware of any such problem. Or should I contact the POA and see if they will fix the standing water?

What is the best way to approach this?

Thanks,

Shalin

Using a property manager we have listed a SFH (in an HOA neighborhood) for rent at $2000 with nearly a dozen showings. It has been on the market for a month now and many have asked if we will negotiate rent.

We have a potential tenant (mother and middle school aged son) who has submitted an application, their finances check out and are willing to pay full price for rent. She has a home cleaning business which she plans on running out of the house with 4 cleaning vehicles (trucks). Apparently staff will come during the day time to pick up the cleaning truck and return it at the end of the day. 

Is this a good tenant to move forward with?
What are the downsides of allowing her to run a business out of the house?

We are worried there will be too many vehicles around. Can we require names and ids of all staff who will be entering the house and register all vehicles with us? 

I appreciate all the advice, thank you. They were unwilling to compensate or negotiate on future fees so right now we are at 40% 1sr months rent for acquisition and 10% management fee. 

My father went ahead and signed because they were unwilling to start prepping the property for showing. 
Now 10 days into prep and no updates on when it will be ready to market.
Because we live in another city it would have been hard to set everything up to prep the property on our own.

This has been quite frustrating working with this new company. 

They property manager couldn’t even give us her professional opinion on what to rent it at because there are no CMAs  in the area. Her thought was to just rent it at the previous  starting  price which is from 4 years ago.

Sorry, no questions in what I wrote, but just sharing this experience and hoping that this isn’t unusual practice from a management company.

Stephen, yes this has been their only mess up so far. 
Drew, that is what I am concerned about. I’m the last year or so, the prior company Century 21 was bought out by Berkshire Hathaway PenFed realty and new people are in charge. I would think with the. Dropping the ball like this they would be much more communicative.

This afternoon the acting manager/associate broker got back to us. Despite their maintenance person doing the move out inspection, the manager wants to see the property in person before making any recommendations on what needs to be done prior to listing it. Let’s see how that goes. 

Thank you, that helps a lot!

We have a SFH in Richmond, VA and have been with the same property management company for 7 years. This year the tenant gave a 2 month move out notice to the assistant property manager who quit the same day. Ultimately no one in the company (or us) knew about the move out until the day the tenant moved out which was August 31st. The company did the move out inspection however took 4 days to submit the report to us. Now we are trying to move forward with them however it's been a week and half and we are getting zero responses from the property manager. We will lose 1 months rent due to vacancy and need for repairs such as paint and carpet cleaning.

Questions:

1. Do we stick with the same company or find a new one?

2. If we stick with them, what should we negotiate in the new management contract. Right now it is 1/2 month rent for tenant procurement and 10% monthly rent for management. Rent is $1800/month.

Thanks everyone!

Thank you for the help! Unfortunately after they provided financials, there were too many expenses for repairs in a completely rehabbed place and there were issues with tenants paying rent. We ended up passing on this property but will keep looking for something else. 

Thank you for the reply. Correct, I don't want to have the profits/expenses and mortgage interest paid under my name. So I can be the mortgage owner but he can be the sole owner of the LLC and reap the tax benefits.

My father and I are working on our first triplex deal and plan on transfer to an LLC after closing. I will be supplying the down payment for the mortgage and initial costs. Ultimately we would like all the profits/losses/expenses to be under his name so there is less tax liability. Do we both need to be on the mortgage and deed? Or can he just be a member of the LLC with 100%/0% split.

Thanks in advance. I couldn’t find an answer after searching through the forums.

-Shalin