All Forum Posts by: Rick Bassett

@Mike M. We involve our client-owners as little as possible, they’re paying us to take care of things.

We reach out to them when cost authorization is required, monthly with their statement, and are available to talk if they wish.

We tend to drop client-owners who want to micromanage us.

@Victor Nguyen for starting out either is fine if the numbers work, but if you do a duplex I would recommend starting with the a side-by-side duplex the first time you do one rather than a multi-floor building.

The reason being is that managing multis (duplexes) with tenants living over each other come with different problems such as noise complaints, and can limit your options accepting pets.

@Yiking Hernandez when I first saw the subject line. I was wondering if this was a new pronoun 😊

Now that I’ve read your thread, I would say that having business cards is important because it makes you look like a serious business person. It doesn’t really matter if they get thrown in the trash, as they are cheap enough.

What we do is we have the basic information on the front, like everybody else does, and on the back we put a QR code with our contact information for those people who would prefer to get it that way.

Best of luck .

@Justin Goodin started off with STR's over 15 years ago and still love them. We were fortunate enough to buy most of them right. The units without mortgages typically net $10-12k annually and the units with mortgages net about 1/2 that. In addition to our own holdings we manage many SFR's and Multi's for investor/owners. The SFR's typically do better for our owners on a per door basis than the multi's do.

@Alexander Rodriguez occasionally we run into this problem with tenants and we rewire the exhaust fan so there’s only one switch to turn the light and the fan on at the same time. It almost always solves the problem if the fan is functional.

@Kathleen Dylan about 30 to 45 days before their move out we send tenants a moveout checklist with all the things that they need to do to maximize the return of their security deposit. We also tell them when they’re going to get their security deposit back and what requirements they have, which are the requirements that are spelled out in the lease, but we highlight the typical problem issues like cleaning, lightbulbs, cutting the lawn, removing all their possessions,… Etc.

@Gabe N. It’s probably best to get their permission if you’re going to use the photos for your advertisements, while they are still in the rental, as there might be personal identification or privacy elements. They might be concerned about.

The only time we run into this is if we take a property over in our property management company and we did not have photos before. Typically we take photos before people move into the property that also serve as our advertisement photos in the future. 

@Tom Server we have had owner/investors hire us when they’ve actually lived in a property (duplex/triplex) because they did not want to deal with the tenants or have the tenants know that they were the owner. Distance is a personal choice. 

@Alec Barnes we leave a lock box on the front door with their keys in it for their self check in. People seem to really appreciate being able to move in at their own pace without the property manager in their way.

One way to alleviate the problem would be for the Gov (Fed & State) to eliminate (or drastically reduce) the capital gains and depreciation recapture taxes on investment properties. It would create the incentive for many REI's to divest their rental properties and would probably drive prices down in the short-term.