All Forum Posts by: Toan Hoang

@Matthew Olszak

Understood thanks. Sounds like you actually own the maintenance business since your not dealing without ourside vendors or your savvy enough to do work yourself. So thats definitely a good thing and makes for one less middleman.

Thanks for the feedback

@Matthew Olszak

Does your virtual asst coordinate the routine service requests with service provider and tenant. Do they actually work wirh tenant on what times are good for service?

Some of that back and forth requires coordination and i was not sure how much support the virtual asst provides.

@Nathan G. Agreed but I imagine it could be managed if the vendor is only authorized to do emergency work which i spelled out. My guess is 99% of any maintenance especially emergency is plumbing related. So if you spelled out the 3 things that they are authorized to do is there any harm in the tenant calling directly? Even if the tenant calls for something stupid like a clogged toilet the plumber should not respond as an emergency. In this model you have to have a good relationship with the plumbing services so they follow your instructions.

Would you agree that most maintenance is plumbing HVAC?

@Nathan G. Thanks makes perfect sense. As far as your first point, when you do get an after hours emergency call just curious how you handle? Do you have the tenant call you or your company directly or have them call the service provider directly.

Btw i see your from Cody. Beautiful town. I have been there several times for work.

I work full time and to date have been okay self managing about 13 different units.  However I do plan to expand and I am trying to prepare in advance rather than wait for something to happen. With that said I know the 2am phone call is the thing that most people reference when they say they dont want to be a landlord. So far I have not had that but I have had interrupted vacations and some other calls that were not the best timing. Thankfully none of these were do or die maintentance requests.  But in order to avoid that has anyone used a after hours or any call service? Has this been effective for you?  I still am capable of taking phone calls fo rmost of the day.  But was thinking about outsourcing the after hours or calls while on vacay.  I have researched and they are relatively cheap for the volume I would expect with base plans at $35 to $45 per month.  So I would love to hear anyones experience with this.  

And for those who do use these services I have 2 more questions.  First question do you outline in your lease what qualifies as an emergeny. For example a tenant should not call an emergency 24 hour plumber for a clogged toilet.  So I imagine you define clearly what qualifies as an emergency?

Second question assuming the emergency is valid do you have your answereing service call your 24 hour plumber direclty to dispatch them or do you have the answering service just give the number to the tenant.  I would think that providing the number to the tenant would be better so they can coordiante and do the follow up with the technician versus my call center basically calling a 24 hour plumber and talking to their call center.  

Im sure one my ask if all I am doing is paying a call center to give the tenant the number of a plumber than I can easily do that myself.  However by having the call center in place it helps vett whether its an emergency first (if not they just call me during regular hours), before they run up an expense.   All in all if it works than I may gradually move from just directing tenants to call after hours and have them call during regular hours too. Any thoughts or prior experiences.

I here you on the key charge but its just an example.  I mean I have a lock box for that purpose but every time they lose a key and I have to change the lock box code than I than that takes me time.  I had one tenant get locked out 2x in one month.  So I dont mind helping but if this occurred over 15 units it would be unmangeable.  its not so much as actually charging in some cases but also looking for a deterrent to lazy behanviour. 

To date I have been very passive in charging and collecting fees other than the normal late charges, etc..  However after doing some reading and realizing that having some of these fees help curb tenant behaviour, I was wondering if there are any statutes that limit what a landlord can charge a tenant for.  For example losing a key, after hour service calls related to NON emergency issue to name a few.  The intent is not to create a profit center through fees but its good  to know what if any constraints exist in Pennsylvania for landlord tenant fees.

@Brit F.

This was the best and most comprehensive response on this topic i ever read. Txs

@Christopher Brainard

Thanks, makes perfect sense. One follow up. Would Due On Sale clause be triggered by adding LLC to deed but keeping me on as well. Your opinion?

There are many discussions on this in various forums so I apologize for the redundancy of this post.  However despite all the blogs I still dont feel like I got a straight answer. Maybe there is no straight answer but hopefully I can aggregate the responses to get an idea of what is possible vs what is a probable success rate is.

QUESTION: Can a person (me) who owns properties WITH a mortgages create an LLC and transfer title of the properties to the LLC I understand the mechanics of creating the LLC and doing the work to transfer to an LLC.

However what I dont know is if by doing this it will trigger the lender to call the loan.  Has anyone done this and have they had issues with there lender.  Some responses I read indicate that it is possible that the lender calls in the loan but NOT probable.   But if anyone has real life experiences it would be helpful.  i did call my lender and asked however i really am not sure if the customer service agent comprehended my question and acted like it was no big deal.  It was almost like it was too easy so I really would want an opinion of someone who does this or has done this ad understand their success or failure.   Obviously for those who own the property outright than its easy.  But for those with mortgages is it really likely the lender calls in the loan?  Are those who have done this just taking the risk and so far so good?