All Forum Posts by: Paul M.

If this is in New York City as poster's location indicates, studios/1 beds are a different and more desirable animal than they are in other markets. I also living in an urban area would love to convert split all my 2 BR apts in 2 1 BRs, make way more in rent that way.

Do you ever make verbal offers or are they always written?

On the one hand it seems sellers would take written offers more seriously and be less dismissive of lower offers.

On the other hand, making offers takes time and potentially expense (if you have your lawyer review your offers).

Thanks, I made some changes to obscure myself a bit. People can still my me on posts, esp since I had my last name public back then and some referred to me in their followups, but I knew the potential for that all along so I haven't shared private business details.

If there was any change to be made that would not be dramatic it might be that you had to sign in to see the names so google would not attach your name to search results.

This came about when I googled one of my business (like my customers might do) and the results were including bigger pockets results high on the list with me writing about it.

I'm mildly concerned about the fact that my full name is showing up in google search results that include biggerpockets.com pages. Creates privacy issues, my tenants could read it, etc. And no way to remove the posts even if I shut down my account. I've been careful in what I post so far, but it would better if the site allowed for more anonymous posting, or if the posts were not googleable. Also that fact that I've had to be careful creates a problem-I'm less open with sharing knowledge/experience with other members of the community.

I understand their are tradeoffs of publicity for the site and preventing trolls.

In my area just a new boiler is 8k. Someone doing a gut renovation is obviously going to spend many multiples of 25k. People talking about spending that little are either doing partial renovations because that is all that is needed or they are in lower cost areas.

Virtually all banks show images of deposits online (because of Check21 act), some banks show images of deposits online. It is a mystery to me why so few banks don't show the deposit images when they are competing on service. Bank of America and USAA do. So that would take care of the issue of same rent amount deposits.

Bank of America and USAA also have a free service to make online transfers to other account holders within the bank.

I used to use paypal for free until they changed their policy and started charging the 3%, which is absurd for a non credit card transaction.

I've done it for years, though I'm on the tail end of doing it. It works great financially while you are young. Problem can be when you notice they caused some minor damage ( a scratch here or there). You can't get over emotional about stuff like that, it is a tradeoff of having tenants in your unit.

Alot of it probably depends on what market you are in. In my area housing is expensive so it is common for people in their 20s and early 30s to have roommates.

I used efax at a couple of different businesses. You can program the incoming faxes to come to multiple email addresses. You get your confirmation via email. Like others, I'd prefer not to use faxes at all, but I can't change the rest of the world. The real estate and contracting business can be a little slow to embrace technology. And scanners and .pdf editing technology isn't as ubiquitous as printers.

You need to mitigate the damages. Advertise the apartment someone who wants to stay just for the month of October. The demand for that is probably less so it will rent for less and tenant can make up the difference. Remind the tenant that they are responsible for the whole amount unless a temporary person is found.

I'd sugggest the contractor edition.