All Forum Posts by: Todd C.

Hey all--

Doing some research for my full-time job today and am looking for some help from the property managers on the forum! You can either PM me or respond directly to this thread, either would be GREATLY appreciated.

The questions I have are:

1) What task(s) do you spend the MOST of your time on?

2) What are the most mundane aspects of your job?

3) What's the greatest area of improvement, in your opinion, for the industry?

I have a few more questions I'd love to ask, but in the interest of your time I want to be as succinct as possible. With that said--beyond these responses, if any of you folks are willing to hop on the phone or meet in person (NYC area) to discuss other questions I have (and to learn about you and your job/company), I would GREATLY appreciate it. The call/meeting would take no longer than 15 minutes. 

I look forward to learning from all of you!

Best,

Todd

I wouldn't be receiving ANY fee. It will be my girlfriend, who IS a broker (just without any experience or knowledge really). Basically the landlord (at some time in the past, nobody remembers when) signed a broker contract to sell. They ended up not selling and has since approached me about getting my GF to sell it for him, because he trusts us.

Hey all--

Making some headway on selling my landlord's property. If my GF and I can get the listing, our real estate career would be off to a great start! That said, my landlord is Chinese and doesn't speak English very well so it's been a struggle with the language barrier to say the least.

I spoke to him on Friday and printed out some key words in Chinese, mainly pertaining to signing a broker contract. His response, at least what I think he said, was that he trusts me and wants to meet the interested parties however, he believes he has a contract signed with another brokerage. Needless to say, I'm concerned with how this could work. I am going to be allowed to sell his property? This can't be the only situation where this has ever happened so I'm interested to see how this type of situation would work -- split commission with other broker or what?

Thanks for the replies. So I don't believe he's going to have the best of records, just by knowing him, but we shall see. His numbers are also going to be look deflated as I doubt he and/or his 2 children that live in the building currently pay any rent.

As an aside, I know that a woman in the building has some sort of rent control situation going on. She also stinks up a large chunk of the building (nobody knows what goes on in there). Are there any legal options that he/new landlord would be able to pursue to get rid of her?

Hey all--

So something (potentially) amazing happened last night! Two nights ago I decided to ask my landlord if he would consider hiring me as a property manager. He owns a 7-unit walk-up building in a high COL area (think metro city) and I figured I could charge him a low percentage and make a couple extra bucks every month. He ended up calling me yesterday and asked for me to stop by his apartment that evening, so I did. We got to talking (there is a bit of a language barrier there), and he ended up saying that he trusts me and wants to sell the building. Luckily for me, my girlfriend is a lawyer and applied/received her broker's license. With that said, we want to take this listing!!! This could jump start our investing careers as we're trying to save to get involved in rental properties and this could be a somewhat decent payday for us. With that said, I have a number of questions.

1) Is there a contract that needs (or we should) sign with my landlord to ensure that he is OUR client and WE HAVE the listing?

2) Typical commissions are 6% for a broker (3% for selling agent/3% for buying agent). If she is the only agent, does she collect the 6% (her father is a big property manager and should be able to find a buyer without the use of a buying agent)?

3) Probably most importantly, but where is the best few places to find comps for this type of building? Or is there an easy way to calculate how much we should list the building for?

4) What documents should I receive from him to see what makes sense? 1) Rent Roll?, what else?

5) What other things should I recommend he do to increase the purchase price and get him the best possible outcome?

@John Kent That seems like it would be the best option. Is the shared equity simply %'s that my mother, uncle and I would have (i.e 33%, 33%, 33%) of ownership of the equity in the property? What exactly woudl right to sublet do--give me the ability to rent out the property? I'm wondering what these land trusts will run me as well. I'm also assuming that we can (1) rent out the property, (2) refinance the property and THEN (3) place it into a land trust/LLC.

I also just want to make sure I havea ll of my ducks in a row. Is the only added benefit of having the LLC as the beneficiary to give me another layer of anonymity? Do they both offer the same legal protection?

@Gerald Demers -- really appreciate the help. I'll definitely need to get in touch with an attorney in the area as this is certainly above my 'pay-grade.' To answer your question about why including them...They'll still own about 25% of the property (have 25% equity after we cash refinance), and as of now they want to keep that ownership so they can participate in some appreciation and some cash flow. Whether or not that changes before we actually execute this is a very different story. 

Just for clarification, you hold ONE LLC that is the beneficiary of ALL of your properties in your NINE land trusts. This still protects you from a legal standpoint?

@Gerald Demers - Just did some research on this. Thank you again for providing the detail as I've never heard of a land trust to begin with. If I understand this correctly, a Land Trust will do just about everything a LLC would, except has higher taxes (what type of tax rate are we looking at?). With that said, would I still receive the tax benefits from interest/depreciation? In terms of liability protection, it seems that I would personally not be liable if I used this structure and the structure was sued--is that true? If not, do you suggest setting up a LLC to be the beneficiary of the trust?

Lastly, can I put more than 1 property within each Land Trust? Advantages/disadvantages of that type of structure? 

I've recently ran into this issue and I'm glad you were able to get back to me. This type of structure you are describing seems relatively complicated, is it not? Also, from what I've heard, moving the mortgage into the LLC could cause the bank to call the mortgage and/or pierce the corporate veil (rendering the LLC useless). One alternative that was made available to me was just setting up a partnership with both my mother and my uncle and have umbrella insurance covering everything, but I am stuck on the legal aspect of this should any of the tenants chose to sue us down the road.

How much does setting up a land trust cost typically?

Hey all! I've been posting recently about a property that my mother/uncle recently inherited. Its a SFH in NJ (down the shore) in an > 55 community. The house was paid for in cash, so no outstanding mortgage, property taxes (2014) were $2,110 and HOA fees are $200/year. My uncle and my mom want to sell the house, however, after running some analysis (pasted below), it seems like this could offer a nicely positive monthly cash flow. In order to get them their equity, I am going to propose renting out the unit, followed by moving it into a LLC (with me as an 80% owner and both my mom/uncle to own a cumulative 20%) and getting them 80% of the equity back. This seems like a win/win from my perspective as it accomplishes everybody's goals! I spoke to a realty company today who has recently rented similar properties out for $1,500/month. If you have any questions/comments about assumptions, please let me know. Thank you all!

Also, is this type of transaction actually possible to do?