All Forum Posts by: Lee Smith

@Gabe G. We would have probably paid around $400~ in labor. 

Vinyl plank flooring is generally around $2.50-$3 a sq ft(labor and materials)
Toilet reseat would be $50~ labor if it was pretty simple. A lot of times it's not so simple.
Tear out and replace of subfloor would be $100-200 labor depending on how bad.

Bathrooms are a tough call.. I almost prefer tile for floors and tub surround. Lasts a long time and looks much better. Plus the difference in price isn't that much. I can do a tile floor and tub surround for about $350-500 labor and materials(doesn't include toilet reseat or new subfloor).. THose cheapie tub surrounds cost $150~ in just materials and you are constantly having to recaulk and deal with them. You need to make sure you put down hardibacker under tile floors though with screws every 4-6 inches..

Most property managers do not want to deal with Low Income properties. If they do, they do a poor job at best. There is a lot more involved in the low end stuff, but if the PM has the systems in place and the knowledge they can be a good investment.

I had bullet points and numbers on each of those items in my list.. Dum ole BP doesn't support their own software on the front end.

@Richard Bull

  I am one of those property managers that charges 1st months' rent.. We used to do a different model and barely charged anything on the front end. I lost a lot of money on that. Let me show you a few of the expenses that go into placement.

Advertising - We put your listing on all the major websites. We update the listing 2-3 times a week on Facebook, and 2 times a week on craigslist.

I have my people answering the phones for prospective tenants from 9am to 10pm 7 days a week. This means more people get their questions answered and we schedule more showings than the average PM.

We shoot high quality photos and high quality videos.

We follow up with perspective tenants 2-3 times to get them to apply for your rental or give us good feedback.

We pay a coordinating broker fee.

We give you weekly status reports of what is happening with your property. This shows how many calls we received, how many showings we had, feedback, etc.

We complete pre-rent reports. I send my guys out to make sure your property is ready to rent. Happy tenants mean they stay longer.

We work very hard to get you GOOD solid tenants. Background, credit, and eviction checks. We know how to figure out if their previous property manager/landlord is their cousin Ricky-Bobby. 

Our lease is 24 pages long. We work very hard to make the tenants as responsible as possible. 

We save you a ton of money on turns and rehabs. I have the contractors and plans in place to make sure you are saving a lot of money.

I am not only a property manager, I am also an investor as well. I created all these systems for my own properties, and you are benefiting from my ongoing knowledge and updates. I am not stagnant or declining in my investing either. You get the benefits of my learning and on-going investing.

You can see this is a lot of stuff for me to pay for, especially on a property that only rents for $500~ a month. 

There's a reason my tenants stay on average 4+ years in a single family home. That's even in the low income stuff. There's a reason I have a 1% eviction rate on the tenants I place. There's a reason 98% of our tenants are paying their rent on time.

Every week, I get 1-3 calls from people who have been taken advantage of by property managers. They pay too much for the property, they pay too much in rehab, and they get poop tenants.. Then the tenants trash the house, and the vicious cycle starts all over again.

I am not trying to sell you, I am just showing what goes into a good property manager.

I am glad your guy in Mississippi is awesome to you! Keep him happy! You are VERY lucky to have him...

@Brian Freeman Typically the city doesn't sue you. They file orders against the house, and then if you neglect to repair or do not repair in adequate amount of time they will fine you with nuisance charges. After the repairs are completed you can go back to the city to appeal the nuisance fines, and generally they will lower them to 30-50% of original amounts. 

Now maybe they have a court date setup, but this is their "HEY, GET WITH THE PROGRAM!" alert.. Not where they lay a bunch of fines on you..

@Mickey Russo Here's a few of my thoughts on multi's in Indy..

In Indianapolis: When dealing with multifams, you need to be aware of a couple of different things.

Higher vacancy rates, instead of 2-4 weeks to fill a single fam, you are looking at 4-8 weeks to fill a multifam. It’s not for lack of applicants, but lack of GOOD applicants.

Higher turnover rates.. While my single fam renters generally rent for 4+ years on average, my multifams only rent for 1-2 years on average. The premium for single family houses is not that much more, and most residents will gladly pay that amount to not have neighbors.

Watch out for owner paid utilities. These can break the deal. While water/sewer is easy to deal with, anytime you are paying for heat you are looking for trouble. Residents crank the heat up in the winter and then open a window to cool off...

I am not trying to scare you off, just you need to budget for them.

In multifams: If tenants are paying all utils I generally say that 1 bedrooms rent for $450-500 and 2 bedrooms rent for $500-550 and 3 bedrooms are $575-650... This is for your typical multifam in Indy in the low income areas.

Does that help you figure out your numbers for a cashflow analysis?

I like realuniversity.com... The owner is awesome and you can do the entire class online.. Tell Raymond I said Hi..

@Account Closed Yes, we only handle within 5 miles of 465 loop(around Indianapolis). Glad it went okay!

@Account Closed This doesn't look that bad to me from the pictures.. How long ago was it "Dug out"... I bet the problem is the gutters are dumping water near there and it's going down and causing this..

Is the house in Indy? I have a great foundation guy, always done right by me.. He could fix the sill issues as well..

I am not allowed to respond per biggerpockets non-advertising rules.. Hence my post was removed by the admins.. /snicker