All Forum Posts by: Scott Meredith

I would be interested in knowing where to look to find a lot of this information. I see people talking about stats but can never seem to find them when I try to find them.

A cheaper strategy to put your properties in would be a separate land trust for each property with the beneficiary being your LLC. Your LLC would be your management company so to speak. This will layer asset protection for you. Also the trust is a flow through entity so no extra tax prep, and they are cheap to set up, once you have the documents (get templates you can fill in from an attorney in your area) it usually only costs a few bucks to file at the county.

If you have not found them checkout the podcasts, they are great. Then you can listen to them in the car on the weekends while looking for properties. http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/category/podcast/

Wordpress is a great website building tool, even for new beginners. I have 3 websites that I built with Wordpress. The plugins most of which are free will allow you to do pretty sophisticated things on your website without needing to know how to do any code writing. You will need to buy a domain name and get a hosting provider. This will be a nominal cost. When you buy your domain name (www.yourwebsitename.com) buy it for as many years as you can afford, this will help a little with your SEO. Wordpress is free and can be installed in 5 minutes on your own, or your hosting provider may install it for you for free also.

As far as capturing their information, your website can do it, but I recommend getting a service with an auto-responder feature. This way once you get things set up you can forget it for the most part. Send me a PM and I can recommend some services to use that are not too expensive and feature rich.

I am getting started with youtube and other internet marketing items. I follow the course I bought and my first video ranked on the first page of google as soon as I posted it. It has back links to my website so it helps overall SEO for my website.

FIBI is great their "credo" as it were is no pitching so you will never be asked to by a guru program. I second the two groups Matthew Owens heads up (Manhattan Beach and Long Beach)....If David C is who I think he is, he helps with the Manhattan beach FIBI Group.

I currently manage my own rentals now, but as I get more and eventually need to hire someone to help me, my plan is to start my own property management company and offer my services to other investors and landlords. I am still a ways away from this but want to get things started so when I do "go public" I have a sound business plan. So I know what I want in a property manager, but I am curious what others would want. I have always thought it is better to ask the customer what they want rather than sell them on what I want to give them.

Thoughts on fees, flat rates, percentages? ranges?

Use of your own vendors or ours (contractors, handymen)...

Accounting reports, which format, how frequently updated, available online, quicken, quickbooks, excel?

Available add on services, monthly maintenance inspections, monthly market reports

Repair limits without notification, what is your limit?

Evictions, prefer to pass on all costs plus a fee, or pay an additional fee monthly to handle outright....

Payment remittance to you after rent is collected, checks, online...

Any other features, benefits, items you would be interested in.