All Forum Posts by: Ryan Vienneau

@Steven Luttman Man you have GOT to be screening for credit, I can't imagine being in this business in NY and not doing that.  We own a property management company and to this day have never had to evict a tenant we placed ourselves, but we inherit tenants from new clients all the time that are awful and its always the ones that weren't credit screened.  Especially now in NYS with HSTPA and Covid, we tightened our credit criteria because its way too costly to place a bad tenant.  

Chuck Rosenstein does it all the time.  Therolawfirm.com

Were they credit screened?  Its pretty rare to encounter drug addicts with strong credit.  As far as reporting, we report concerning situations to social services regularly, but not all ss depts are very helpful.  I think you got out of this in as good a shape as you could have hoped for, especially during the moratorium.  And as landlords, we absolutely have zero responsibility over if they have a place to go after eviction.  A lease is a mutual agreement between consenting adults, and tenants that break that contract need to take personal responsibility for their own actions, especially ones with children.  Its unfortunate when children are involved, but that's where social services come in.  We are not social services, especially in a state that taxes us to death in order to provide those services.

I've done a lot of rehab work in Schenectady and the zoning board is trying to decrease density there, not increase it, so there's very little chance of getting that approved.  I've attempted to add extra units to a couple properties I own there and they weren't having it, and I even had adequate off street parking.  

We own a property management firm in Saratoga County and manage tons of properties there, and here's the thing about STR's in Saratoga Springs:

1. Every client who owns a property in Saratoga Springs thinks they want to do STR's because of the rates they can get during the 6 weeks of track season until they actually run the numbers with realistic expense loads and vacancy rates for a full 12 months. The 3 months of summer where visiting Saratoga is in demand does not offset the cost of the other 9 months of the year when the tourists aren't in Saratoga and you struggle to fill vacancies.

2. You'll pay a PM at least 35% if not more, and that doesn't include the cost to turn the unit (pay cleaners, maintenance, etc). It costs a fortune to do STR's.

3. At the same time, if you're going to own a vacation property in Saratoga regardless, you can definitely make some money when you're not there doing STR's, but as an investment vehicle on its own it doesn't pencil.

4. The only way I've seen it work is to rent to students at Skidmore for the school season, then do an STR over the summer. However, once you take into account the expenses and vacancy rates associated with the summer STR, it's still better to just rent it 12 months at a time.

Thanks @Nate Monson!  @Christopher J. I'll DM you our contact info.

Van Schaick Island is good.  Lancaster, and Congress are pretty ghetto.  Downtown south of Columbia is pretty questionable.  The west side going up the hill is pretty good, near imperial ave.  

@Michael Ablan Just FYI, in NY since the HSTPA was passed, if a tenant has occupied the property < 1 year and their lease if for less than 365 days, you can non-renew with 30 days notice, but if they're been there between 1 and 2 years you need to give 60 days' notice, and over 2 years 90 days' notice.  And since we can now only collect 1 month's deposit in NY, that basically means if you non-renew a tenant that's been with you over 2 years, you're almost guaranteed to go that last 3 months without that tenant paying.  

We're a property manager in the Saratoga/Albany NY area, and we're still getting plenty of hits on our rentals, and NY is the hardest hit of all the states.  We do remote self-showings with a digital lockbox, so that is helping us immensely right now, and we just had a move-in yesterday, so people are still moving.  Sure, some will delay their move, but at least in our market if you get no hits in the first 2 or 3 days, you're priced too high.  

Call Sarah Dorsey at Knapek, Gabrielle, and Bottini in Latham.  They've handled my needs with real estate and property mgt for years and are excellent.