All Forum Posts by: Trevor Stone

Hi @Stephanie Jacobson, awesome update. Looks like the City is really pushing kids out of the residential neighborhoods and into the hands of the big developers downtown. What has this done to supply - are the houses already used for student housing that are now in a new zone grandfathered in either to the existing owner or protected during sale? Has there been enough development downtown, in Johnson City, and along the Parkway that those units are preferred by students and soaking up the off-campus demand?

That rent growth for students is crazy. I've learned by talking to recent students that the desirable locations are now closer to downtown and farther south toward Riverside drive (Chestnut-Seminary-Oak-Riverside). North of Main St. is still taboo for them. Also, that students expect not just fully furnished rooms and all kitchen appliances (as when I was there), but also TVs in common areas and other amenities. I assume that drives up rent (and landlord expense).

Hi, @Nicky Venditti,  Alot of good stuff here. We have a few dozen units in Buffalo and acquired about half the tenants with the properties. After several years of finding our own tenants and getting the properties to OUR standards, we noticed the inherited tenants are the ones giving us issues and we've moved to evict a few. For future purchases where tenants are in place, we'll likely be leaning toward @Nathan Gesner's recommendation and planning for the reno costs. It's nice to start fresh when it's thoroughly planned rather than running into issues with a tenant and dealing with those costs plus an unscheduled reno. Remember, the current tenants fit the Seller's criteria which may not match yours. So, think about your screening process (if you'll be doing it yourself) and the types of tenants YOU want. If it's hard to assess if the tenants in place meet YOUR criteria, I'd try to get them out by closing time if possible. If they are a good match, then I like @Timothy Smith's approach. FYI Section 8 has limits on increases and has rent amount standards for the size of the unit and zip code.

Hi @Courtney Kelly, our broker in Buffalo, NY brings us off market deals pretty frequently. She has worked with us for several years now, knows what we like, what we are good at, how we operate, and what might pique our interest. If your agent doesn't know what you're after or what you can do, or your level of interest, I'd start by showing her - often. Underwrite deals that recently closed that fit your niche and show her the details. Visit the properties she has closed (or those closed by other brokers) and let her know which ones you would have liked a shot at and why. 

If you want to source them yourself, just being present in the neighborhood and making relationships can help. We BRRRR'd a place in late 2020 and the owner across the street liked what we did and thought we'd be a good fit to take great care of his owner-occupied double. And we did. I was on the same block last week and we told a neighbor of our interest in the place next to his and had a productive conversation about the property's history. We plan to continue that convo to see if it will be a 'foot in the door' opportunity.

Best of luck!

I am pretty risk averse, so when we quickly picked up three Buffalo properties when we got going I called the lender (same for all three props) directly and had an honest convo about it. In our case the same people on the mortgages would be the sole owners of the LLcs so nothing would materially change for the lender. I think they just requested our formation paperwork and we had to make a formal written request. It’s a risk to contact them, but I wanted to avoid them calling our Subject To clause since we were going to do more business with that lender.

@Tim Delaney thanks for the questions. We have divvyed up the properties into 3 business entities and they roll up to our partnership entity. We also used Stessa but I felt it didn't' quite cut it anymore. If we are going to grow and potentially bring in investors, I wanted a real accounting system. Yardi and the other products I evaluated (and many others I didn't) have incorporated double-entry accounting into their products. So, yes, I believe it replaces Quickbooks, etc. in this case. If we do create an entity with investors, say, we'll be able to organize and report on that as a separate financial entity without using a separate instance of Yardi.
I also hired a bookkeeper as a coach to make sure I'm setting things up right, etc. and really learning the right financial processes. The idea being that once we are ready, I can fully outsource the bookkeeping but have confidence to oversee it.
It's kind of annoying (and almost a deal breaker for us) that Yardi doesn't import live bank transactions as we were used to that with Stessa, but it is forcing me to stick to consistent entry and coding things correctly.

BTW, you do have the option to pass the CC/Debit Card charges onto the tenant for online payments if you like, or you can absorb them. Walk-in (cash) payments have a fee too but its comparable to Money Order fees that our tenants already choose to pay.

@Drew Sygit I put it on my calendar!

@Calvin Hopkins we recently implemented Yardi Breeze and it fits our needs and use cases. Your question made me finally write a forum post on our experience evaluating several PM platforms - so thank you! In the RE Tech and Social Media category you'll find a lot of tips and experiences folks have posted. I found it helpful to review posts from a few years ago and contact the BP members directly to see how their experience has been. That got me a short list of vendors to research. I did come across Nestegg.rent that offered a concierge service of vetted vendors, including contactors. Interesting idea, but it was for really small portfolios and only certain locations. Plus, I agree with @Matthew Irish-Jones about being careful with choosing contractors - especially from afar.

Hi BP Community,

I’ve benefited from the BP brain trust when looking for recommendations on property management software so having finally chosen one, I thought I would share my findings in case it helps someone else. This is a little long, but if you want detail, here it comes.

Spoiler alert! We went with Yardi Breeze.

Context and Assumptions:

- We started the search and evaluation in November of 2021 for Jan 2022 implementation.

- Our portfolio has 27 units of small multifamily in Buffalo, NY which we self-manage.

- We are a buy and hold, long-term rental team without any STR's so my search did not consider the specific or unique needs of a short-term rental portfolio.

Your Needs and Business Type:

Choosing a PM platform really depends on what type of role you play in REI and what your needs are. Do you self-manage? Are you a PM exclusively? Do you self-manage and manage for others? Do you focus on short term rentals (STRs) or long-term? What types of assets do you manage? Make sure you consider what you do now and what you plan to get into in the future as those businesses could have different needs and the platforms in the market may address them differently (or not at all).

The Market:

It’s crowded. Even the banks are getting into it (Story by JPMorgan). We started this search because we wanted to automate cash rent collection and it spiraled from there. My research led me to break down the market of property management software into two main segments. I call them ‘Front End Process’ and ‘End to End Property Management’. Platforms in the former category tend to focus on lead generation, unit listing services, tenant acquisition, tenant screening, applications and leases, or online rent collection and unit/tenant/payment tracking. Think, RentRedi, TurboTenant, SchedulemyRent, and NestEgg.rent. The latter category typically offers those features plus double-entry accounting and financial reporting, maintenance work order management, owner portals and reporting, tenant portals and communication, inventory management, utility management, and native or add-on services like cash rent collection, e-signatures, third party app integrations, APIs, etc. 

Because we are growing, it was worth focusing on the end-to-end platforms so the tool could support our growth. That’s where I’ll focus below.

The Players:

We formally evaluated four platforms after market research and chats with other professionals. By formally, I mean web research, calls with Sales, product demos, and free trial evaluations. We eliminated Appfolio as it seemed focused on the big PMs with high minimums for units (50) and monthly fees ($250+). So we focused on:

DoorLoop

This was the youngest, web-first platform (2019) in our eval. The product is beautiful, and it was priced competitively, but there were a few features we needed that were still ‘on the roadmap’ - mainly, cash rent collection. The demo of bank rec tools didn’t leave me as confident as other platforms either. It isn’t right for us now, but I like where they are going and will keep an eye on their growth.

Rent Manager

RM has been serving the industry since 1982. I found it VERY robust with incredible detail and additional feature options (they have their own in-app Voip solution) in each subscription tiers. I’ve heard it’s great if you PM for other owners and imagine it can handle very large portfolios well. For us, the detail would be overwhelming. It was also comparatively pricey with a $200/month minimum obligation.

Buildium

Buildium is a web-first platform started in 2002 and has grown into a global, PE-backed player. I think we would have been happy with Buildium. I liked the UI more than Yardi (the free trial performed well) and they offer a stand-alone mobile app and real-time bank transaction synchronization – which Yardi does not. It was the pricing model that gave me pause. At $50/month it’s cheap to start but in the race to one hundred units it quickly became more expensive than Yardi. They also had a $100 per-bank account setup fee at the Essential feature tier that just rubbed me the wrong way. That said, put it on your list to check out because it's a strong contender.

Yardi Breeze

Yardi (corporate) has been around since 1984 and Breeze is the small/mid-market offering based on their enterprise Voyager product. We opted for the Breeze feature tier (we could grow into Breeze Premium). So far so good. We received 8 hours of dedicated phone/Zoom support with an implementation specialist who was VERY knowledgeable. Our main areas of use thus far are managing the properties, units, tenants, rent roll, and the double-entry accounting suite. There are quirks – a dedicated URL rather than logging in on the public site and a mobile-responsive site rather than a phone app. We will be enrolling tenants in the tenant portal for online and retail (cash) payments and will begin using the maintenance work orders this quarter. Feel free to check in with me in a few months for an update.

Conclusion:

Remember, your tools have to support your business model and process. So get clear on what you need from a tool and what things you will not sacrifice to protect yourself from shiny object syndrome. Then try out the options that seem like a close fit. Ask around BP for real user opinions and keep an eye on the market as new players are entering all the time. I hope my experience gave you some things to think about and even some options to evaluate for yourself. 

Good luck!

@Evan O'Brien happy to share my experiences with you in relation to @Matthew Irish-Jones’s great points. There are different ways to go depending on what you’re after.

@Evan O'Brien, I invest in small multifamily in Buffalo. Second largest city in the state, recent (modest) population growth, lots of development going on, low taxes in relation to purchase prices (cash flow!), and diversity in the economy (proper, suburbs, and proximity to CAN). Good rental demand. Great people. Much lower capital needed to get into the game than here on Long Island - if you’re starting with your own money.