All Forum Posts by: Shawn L.

@Account Closed it ended up just being two responses that came in via text from my first mailing. Of those two, one of them was a potentially motivated seller that I will be following up with next week, as they are looking to sell in April. The second included threats to my well being for sending them a letter. I have since ported the GV number into Patlive because I could not justify paying for another phone line just to receive text messages. I removed the "text message" call to action in subsequent mailings.

@Jason Cadyle you are correct that snow removal is not particularly cheap, however in my eyes it is a necessary expense for multi family properties. My research concludes that a clause in a residential lease requiring the tenant to be responsible for snow removal of any common area is unenforceable and in no way releases the property owner of liability in the event of an injury. Therefore if you decide to make snow removal the tenant's responsibility, you are letting them control your exposure to the liability related to slip/fall accidents.  Not a good position to be in. Do some research on this, there was a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that changed some of these laws that you should be able to find very easily via Google.

The bottom line is that snow removal, like all other expenses, should be budgeted for. I typically include $1,000 per year in my analyses on 2-4 family properties unless there is a particular feature that justifies a significant increase or decrease in this figure. Based on operations the past few years this is probably a touch high on average, but certainly not out of line.

Regarding landscaping, of course the consequences of inadequate upkeep are a bit less severe than they are for snow removal. That said I generally expect to be responsible as the owner of a multi family property, because dividing these responsibilities between tenants on separate leases could be a headache.  To @Roy N.'s point, this would be much easier to manage if the property is set up in such a way that each unit has its own exterior area which is easy and obvious to define. In the end it all comes down to the individual property.

Just as a quick follow up to this it is worth noting that yesterday I received a call from one of Patlive's Account Executives in response to this thread. He explained the issue with GV and said that they have attempted to work with Google to come up with some sort of fix but they haven't had any luck as of yet. He also said that they have a VoIP service through one of their other companies with SMS capability, which looks similar to some of the other services mentioned earlier in this discussion.

I'm still a bit on the fence about which direction I want to go. I like the idea of porting my number to Verizon and just having another cell phone, but I'm struggling to justify the additional $20/month just to be able to receive text messages as an initial contact. Last night I mail merged my next set of letters that will go out next Monday so I just need to determine if my call to action will include texting as a method of contact before I hit print.

@Aaron Fakerson

That was one of the articles I came across in my research. One of the features GV allows you to do is to have a common voicemail box for all of your phones (i.e. work, home, cell, etc. all go to the same voicemail). That is was the article you linked to is referring to. The GV number still has its own distinct voicemail box that apparently cannot be disabled.

@Ryan Dossey Thanks for the additional feedback!

My understanding is that the recording option from Patlive is similar to your hybrid solution.

Shawn

@Ryan Dossey Thanks for the reply.

My only attachment to the GV number is that it's already out there in the first two batches of letters I sent out. While I have considered buying the number (I believe Google charges $3) and porting to Patlive, I would lose SMS text capability. I was looking to use a system similar to GV but one which would allow me to disable voicemail. I honestly didn't think of just adding the line to my cell service carrier, but that is a good thought which I will look into as well.

I agree that the length of time it takes them to pick up is a bit of a concern. There is an option within their system to have a recording play while waiting but I thought that may be more frustrating than just ringing. My intent is to get some feedback on that when I follow up with sellers, but I haven't been able to do so yet as none of the calls have actually been answered by the service yet.

Great, thanks @Account Closed!  I'll check them out as well.

Shawn

@Account Closed thanks for the reply.  The issue isn't so much that Google Voice is not a "real" voicemail, but more so that I'd much prefer to have the calls answered rather than being sent to voicemail in the first place.

I have seen Ring Central, it looks like they have a lot to offer.  Do you have experience with them?  Any idea if voicemail can be either disable or delayed enough to give the operators time to answer?

Shawn

Thanks for the feedback @Adrien C. I'll check them out!

Shawn

Good morning everyone

I have hit a bit of a snag with forwarding my Google Voice (GV) number to Patlive, and I’m hoping that someone on here has some ideas for me. Also, a search of BP yields very few results related to GV and Patlive so hopefully this will help someone in the future as well.

I recently sent out my second round of yellow letters, and decided to try Patlive since I missed most of the calls on my first round of mailings. I forwarded my existing GV number to my Patlive number, since my previous marketing used this number and I wanted to remain consistent.

Fast forward to yesterday and calls started coming in, but the issue is that the Patlive operators don’t pick them up quick enough and they are sent to GV’s Voicemail system. I get my email from Patlive, but instead of a summary of the call it just says that it was a hang up. So far, all my call backs have done this. Kind of defeats the purpose of having an answering service. I did a bunch of reading and it appears that there is no way to disable or delay GV’s voicemail, and this is one of their biggest complaints. You get what you pay for I guess.

I spoke with Patlive’s customer service and they said that this is a common problem with GV numbers; one representative said that only 60% of the calls that come in from a GV number are answered in time! Their recommendation is for me to port my number into their system. I have no emotional attachment to GV so I was about to go ahead with the port when my phone, sitting next to me, buzzed with a text message. “Oh yeah,” I thought, “my yellow letters say to call or text at my GV number.” I then confirmed with Patlive that if I port my number to their system, I will lose all SMS functionality. As an aside the text conversation that followed was very productive, so I do believe this is a viable means of initial contact.

So my questions are:

• Has anyone run into a similar issue and come up with a work around so that the GV does not send calls to voicemail before being answered by Patlive’s operators?
• Does anyone know of a service similar to GV that allows SMS texting, but also allows you to disable voicemail completely? I know there are a bunch of different systems out there, some paid and some free, but looking to see if anyone has used any with good results.

Thanks in advance for any feedback!