All Forum Posts by: Yangyang Jin

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I would like to get your recommendations of how to vetting potential tenants. They work at restaurants and their employers confirmed about their monthly income. I would like to learn some more about these tenants, but not sure what type of questions to ask with the employer and their current landlord. 

thank you Cheryl, for your feedback information. My property is in Bernardsville, NJ. I have sent you a connection request, look forward to having a discussion with you. 

Calling attention for Landlord and Realtors, how would you approached the listing the rental properties? I have just finished rennovating my duplex in central New Jersey. And have listed for a week now, only have two showings. As I am anxious to rent them out and wanted to know why there is so limited showing. Below are some of my observations and I wanted to get your opinion, and how would you have handled this to attract more showings and speed up the process. 

1) I tried to look up my rental property online ( my realtor listed this for), I am not able to find this property as an active rental on Zillow, trulia and apartment rental websites, I know it got listed on MLS. Does my agent put too much limit on where to advertise the rental property?

2) My agent has gotten approached by quite a number of potential tenants, but instead of showing them the property first. She sends application form and background check forms for them to fill out before they even get to see the property. Her rational is that she is not comfortable about showing the property without knowing much about the candidates. 

The more I think about this approach, the more I think there is a mismatch here. Number 1 proberly limited potential quality tenants finding this active listing, number 2 deters potential good tenants because of the strict process in place before showing. 

I started to wonder if this is a mis match of the project and the agent. She is a good residential agent and excels in buying and selling. But she was not extremely comfortable about taking on this rental project from the very beginning. A few things included not willing to use my contract template but realtor standard template, and told me she does not do much rental, and the time she spent on rental is just as much on buy & sell but much less commission. I also realzied she lives a little far from the rental property and possibly becasue of all of these reasons that she went with the approach 1 &2 as I mentioned above? 

Look forward to hearing your perspective and feedback. 

2 cents from an inexperienced investor- do the things the right way. 

I did some renovation on a rental property a few years, thought we got a good deal finding some cheap contractor who does not even have license. We applied for the permit on our own. The work got one, look beautifully. When the inspection comes around, the electrical work done by the contractor failed, 3 times! And that's not the end of the story. As we continue to own the property, a few years later, we found that tile work done at the bathroom was not correct and the tile started to fall off. What's even worse, they had some electrical wires exposed instead of capped, right underneath the joint of pipes, some time later, we found the pipes were leaking, and thank God we found the issue and fixed. Can't imagine what could have happened if we didn't find it on time. 

My lesson learned and would want my fellow investor to avoid this, do not cut corners, do the right things when it comes to renovation, and or everything else.

I acquired 4 new units in the beginning of the year, and lined up renovation work to start in July. The contractor I am using is the person I have worked for over 4 years and in general trustworthy, and willing to explain the work he is doing. I asked for a quote of rennovating all 4 units, price look good and I did not consider asked around for quotes for comparison. And I had lot of confidence of starting the renovation work with him. However, I was very shocked when he provided an updated estimate for the 1st unit he started working on, the price was 50% more than the original quote. We had the discussion, and he tried to explain, but somehow the math still does not add up. I went through the original quote and the updated quote in detail, thought they way he did the estimate was not consistent and confusing.  The categories shown in his estimate is completely different, so it's hard to compare apple to apple, and understand why the big difference in cost. There is some major structural work was not considered and known in the original estimate, which I can understand, but that is still far from the 50% bump. 

The 1st unit is at the end of the renovation work, but there are 3 units left and need to start the renovation soon. I am very eager to hear what do you think and would love to get more quotes to understand if what the contractor is charging reasonably? 

Thank you all for chiming in for not having photos for a listing. What do you think of a realtors role in obtaining the key information in the process so to ensure the outcome of sale? It seems my agent also does not put her best effort in getting key information. Like the offer we've gotten, she does not know there is a sale contingency, and if the buyers buyer has contingency. And I have to ask her to get that info from the buyer agent, she was suggesting I work this out with my attorney in obtaining the information.