All Forum Posts by: Todd Groom

@Tyler Harvey we have used it a lot. Can I ask what was your bad experience? And do you pay for it or only use its free options?

Also while using this we don’t just use the free scan. We use the pro part where it gives you all of the units it pulls and their locations. I scroll down look at all the rentals and see what they look like where they are etc. it’s been pretty spot on. The only time it’s been off was the first few months during covid. Because rates artificially dropped but recovered super fast. Always look at rent.com and a few other places to confirm but yes, the pro version is a good source.

@Jeromy Jordan it should never matter who owns it always do your own inspections. Find yourself a good local inspector you can build a relationship with and trust. That’s all we care about. Tenants will cover for their landlord and some will make a mountain out of a molehill. We have had tenants try to kill deals and encourage deals. So while we listen to what some tenants have to say we take it with a grain of salt.

Also look at the location of the building. If it's in a low income area then you will have bad reviews. People like to complain about everything and pay nothing. We have a lot of HUD properties and have purchased from some characters. Always came down to having great team of inspectors, a great Realitor etc.

@Kai Van Leuven as someone who tried it for a few months I would not recommend it for anyone with less than 50 units and wants 100% of everything to go thru automation. Including maintance, communication, rents etc and have everything linked to bank accounts etc. it’s a full service program. Also expensive

@Jeff Steinso forgot to mention Stessa has another feature if you link your bank account it will auto populate the transactions for you. So if a tenant pays rent it automatically populates it and tracks it as well as other transactions but I have not tried that feature yet. DM me your email and I’ll send you some screen shots.

@Jeff Stein I’ve tried buildium I can’t say they are bad but I do not recommend them for smaller companies. Their program is really built for a large company with hundreds of units. We spent several hundred bucks and hardly used it at all. It created a massive amount of repetitive work. Putting in request then having to start the work request then complete the request. Just time consuming.

You said you use cozy why are you not using that to track who has paid and who has not? You can manually enter payments. We have 14 u it’s and for now it works great. Tenants can submit maintance request, make payments and you can also track payments. When you want to see who hasn’t paid you simply click outstanding rents and it shows you every unit who hasn’t paid just scroll down.

As far as tracking numbers we use Stessa another awesome free tool. This shows us down to the cent where every penny is going, cash on cash returns, current property values, futures, has document storage for leases and receipt you can easily upload to every unit or property. Easy to track individual receipts as well. Scan a receipt and it will try to auto populate the fields. Then it also will give you several ways to see your numbers either combined or individual properties as far as returns etc. also they are adding new stuff every day. Def check it out of you haven’t and like I said it’s free.

Between those two tools we just use an Attorny and CPA which we are trying to find.

thanks for what was posted. It's insane we just picked up yet another large building and yet again another late fee structure. $25 plus $2 per day fee. 

So to date we have from purchases

$100 flate fee 6 days

$50 as of 3rd day, $25 per day after 6th day

$25 at 6th day $2 per day after 7th

And the one I am conidering $50 late fee as of 6th, $10 per day until 11th. 11th we send eviction notice. So basicly $50 then $100 at point of eviction. Second Idea was $50 after6th and $100 after 11th. That came from I think an attorny. But I like the $50 with $10. The thing is Once a tenant gets hit with a late fee they don't care. Why should they pay? There is no incentive to get it paid. So with a daily fee then this gives them the push like hey save some money. 

In Florida a tenant doesnt have to pay the late fee at all if they dont want. By law they can not be charged a late fee for having a late fee balance, can not be eveicted for a late fee balance and do not have to pay the late fee balance when leaving. Never understoon that whole part so smart tenats really only have to worry about eviction. 

NY market from everything I have read and seen has imploded. I am not sure if its just the city or the state but there is a mass exidous to other states. They are calling it Pre and Post bandwidth. Meaning pre-bandwidth companies had to have large amounts of office space and employees had to live close by. The owners had to still live with in reason. But now they have learned that ISP's have the bandwidth at home and they no longer need millions in office space. So places like Utah, Florida, Nevada and more that do not have state taxes are being flooded with these employees and owners. Our market in Tampa is exploding here. Market rent is soaring as everyone is staying in place and new ones are moving in daily. 

I have read this may not be the same as 9/11 or the 08 crash and that New York won't recover like it has in the past. So we shall see in the coming years. I have seen commercial realesate in the city has been cut in half. Store front, ground floor, front facing is going for $35 a foot in some places, Insane. 

I have a friend managing my properties for me. We are slowly changing how hes paid. At first he was just charging $50 per unit flat fee. This was just to cover his time but I also provided free room and board. It was just more of a, hes helping me cause he has rentals. That was with 5 doors that were mine. he does not charge anything for the ones we are 50/50 on. However, I then bought 7 more and quickly his workload tripled. So thats one thing to keep in mind. Five apartments is a little work but each time you add 1 unit seems like the workload multuplies by 2 or 3. So now we are leaning more in to the tranditional % of rent per unit plus a new lease fee and a renewal lease fee. I'm reading all these post above and have never heard of some of these ways. I called several PM companies and all of them had the same thing, 8-10% monthly rent, 50-100% first months rent on new leases and 0-50% 1st month on renewals. 

If he starts a PM company is he a broker or meets the requirments to operate a PM company? Here in Florida you need to be a realitor. Also are you going to just hand over all of the income and he pay you whats left every month like most PM companies. Or is he going to run everything through your bank account such as repairs, cost etc then you pay him a monthly rate?

I thought the deposit for florida was with in 14 days? Not sure where I read that I will for sure have to double check. Also I notice you charge the late fee plus daily late fees. This is something we had switched to but I am reading more and more that its against the law to charge a daily late fee. I have been unable to find anything that states otherwise. If you have anything in writting that says we can charge a daily fee please post it. 

As far as your question, I'm a bit confused. I don't see anything where they stayed an extra day but maybe I am not reading it correctly. You said they moved out on the last day of their lease? Or was it the day after their lease ended? And what day did her lease end? Most end on the last day of the month. So if she moved out on the last day of the month and thats what it states on the lease I'm not sure theres anything to collect. At that point its yours to clean, prep and get ready to reent to the next person. Again sorry if I did not read that correctly. 

lol yes I have done that a few times. I have done it to the point I let a guy come out and actualy walk a property I had that belonged to a hoarder. Paid $30 k for this thing needed about $50 k rehab. Told him $120 cash its yours. not sure why but he never called me back again lol. 

On another note it did pay off recently I have to confess. We bought a home advertised $70k seller dropped to $60 we offered $53 cash deal and got it. Had it a few weeks just didnt have time with a dozen other purchases. Laying in bed one night got a call wanted to buy the hoarder house. Told them, no but I have another give me $60k cash takes it. They googled it and accepted the offer on the spot. 3 weeks later had $60k. Hardest $7k (had cost in it) we ever made. Well, before Uncle Sam takes his cut.