All Forum Posts by: Bruce L.

we do help a oversea clients to manage couple of his investment properties. however, this deal was referred via a friend.

On the opposite of the equation, how would you go find the right people to manage your properties? is there any must have attributes? anything needs attention in particular?

What about looking for good deals on properties. Being remote, first thing is how do you find the right real estate agent, can you trust everything you see on pictures? do you find the properties first? or you find your team first?

summer is the peak season, but it also depends on a lot of other factors.

are your potential tenants families? single? students? young professionals? families who move to a different school district would definitely do all that before the school year starts, and that's summer.

There are a lot of people switch job, a lot of those happens in summer too.

Recently we helped our client to rent his townhouse out, and we found the tenant who's moving in town.

When everyone is trying to move at the same, the demands go up and the supply is technically fixed, you can technically demand more rent, but then again, it also depends on other factors too.

We manage 4 properties for one of our client, we send him a monthly report with the high level income and expenses and net amount, for each of the units, and also a summary.

We start using this software called Buildium, we like it. It has a lot of tools for property management, setting up your contact list, positing it online, have your own personal site for the company, etc.

If the owner has no interest in selling at the moment, and we keep in touch bi-monthly, would that make us seems pushy? I know it's a case by case scenario, just asking in general.

Is there any good resources on negotiation? how to talk to the seller from an ok deal to become a great deal?

thanks.

So, what's the best action to take when scenario like this happens: renting to tenants who become Section 8 after signing a lease?

-if they have only limited amount that's approved, and lower than the agreed upon amount on the lease, that means part of the rent is at risk?

-you can't just 'kick' them out, can you?

-can you change the lease? or terminate the lease? I am guess not, at least not because of Section 8?

-side deal is basically 'illegal', on both side? so how do recoup the differences?

basically it take times and experience, to learn the local market. when I first reading the forum in BP, people talk about rule of thumb of x%, and how the math work out, etc. 

Then I start thinking about how does that apply to the Seattle market and I asked myself, these number doesn't make sense at all, we just don't have property that cheap, or I just don't know about it, so the rules, or the math and numbers just don't work.

Just need to learn your local market and find out the set of rules and numbers that work.

@Joshua Gordon Thanks! 
and what's yellow letter? is it advertising letters that you send out to a mass potential buyer/seller?

Oh, also have everything on record, phone calls, complains emails, etc. When it comes to police, court, attorney, all of those will help.

can you explain what's large yellow letters to me?

Hi Pria,

we have been having very similar issue, not exactly the same, but similar. We have a rental townhouse so there's nobody above or below our tenants, the issue for us is our next door neighbor. 

She also complains, bang on the wall, complain about noise, she even use a device to record noise! and also have set up video camera pointing to the driveway.
she was either unemployed, or she's doing home business for some sort, that's why she's always at home.

When this first happened, we try to resolve issues by working between her, HOA and the tenants. However, after couple times we kind of knew what's up!

Long story short, i think our neighbor is just looking for action, seems like she's bored, or she's just not fix for apartment/townhouse/condo environment. One of our tenants sent her a warning letter from their lawyer, and she kept quite for a while.
we have also told her to call the police couple times, surely enough she never called.
I think telling her to call police actually help the situation becasue her complains were based on no basis, and she probably don't want to get in trouble for calling police because of silly reasons.

Our HOA has helped a bit too, a lot of time conflicts go directly to HOA, which save us some crazy phone calls and emails.

for you, how was the noise level between the upper and lower level? understand that certain level of noise do happen in these housing environment, but if they can hear every single thing that's happening, that could be a real issue.
are they crazy people being unseasonable? is it only the upper tenant that's causing trouble? or both?
Maybe investing in some sound proof ceiling/floor/wall? Or if they are being unresonable and just causing trouble, let them to deal with each other, or even tell them just call the police maybe the solution.