All Forum Posts by: Josh Sterling

@John Horner We went through the initial sales call with Appfolio last week. I was initially excited to see what they offered compared to buildum, as I felt buldium was lacking a few features.

Luckily, during that process a buildum "account manager" reached out to me (I think they heard we were considering leaving buildum during one of our support phone calls). He ended up being extremely helpful and, to my surprise, it turned out that buildum actually had almost all of the features I was looking for in appfolio, I just didn't know they existed.

We are now committed to sticking with buildum.

We've been using buildium for about 3 years (manage 400 units). I have really been thinking about making the switch to appfolio but the comments above make me question that. 

While I know buildium had its issues, we have numerous work arounds in our ops manual, everything I read online seems to be positive about appfolio.

The features I'm most interested in are the ability to automatically post listings to our Wordpress website, the ability to automatically send owner statements, a more direct billing system for work orders.

Has anyone that made the switch found it to be reasonably possible when you were already managing several hundred units? 

I recommend not paying anything out of pocket. If the lender is attempting to add a fee that will be part of the total note and rolled into the loan, it may not be a scam, just an attempt to squeeze a little more out of the deal. While that is definitely not right, it may be worthwhile to just accept it to get the deal closed. 1% is probably fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

It's tough to do, but sometimes you have to ask yourself "Do I want to be right, or do I want to be rich?"

@Jeff Lipple Thank you for the referral!

@Brian Wobbe If you would like more information on us at Epic Property Management please feel free to contact me at any time.

BP will not allow me to post my contact info here, but you can find it on our website.

@Steve Babiak We use a passage only set for the door knob. The extra benefit is that it is now impossible for a tenant to lock themselves out.

I didn't see mentioned, but on our multi families we use the kwikset smart key "key control" deadbolt. It has a key access for the tenant key, then if you spin the faceplate there is a key access for the master key. They can both be rekeyed when needed as long as you have the current working key.

On all kwikset locks (regular smart key and key control deadbolt) If for some reason you don't have the current working key, kwikset sells a cylinder reset tool. To use it the lock must be disassembled and the cylinder removed, but then the tool allows you to rekey the lock to any key without having a current working key.

I haven't had much luck with Hubzu. Can you put me on the pm list as well? I'd love to hear your strategy.

Thanks!

congrats @George P. !! 

I'm sure you will get much better than $1,050/month. Also, it's nice to pick them up "free & clear" so you can get a blanket loan on a couple and get more ammo that way.

Welcome Cris! Be sure to check out the local BP meetup held monthly, usually in the royal oak/Berkley area. Also the Wayne County REIA meets on the 1st Tuesday of each month in Southgate.

I would call around to a couple brokers in the area. I have worked with 2 since switching from State Farm. I'm paying about half of what I was before and they can insure any type of property as they have access to multiple products.

PM me if you want recommendations for the brokers