All Forum Posts by: Yishi Garrard

Hey @Matt Carpenter , welcome to BP! I live here in Tucson as well, and recently graduated from the UofA with a business degree. I'll shoot you a PM, but my company is definitely geared toward investors, and my business partners are UofA grads and we work on flipping houses, working with investors on acquiring income properties, and we also run a property management company as well as a real estate sales brokerage. If you'd be interested in working with us, we are always looking for the right talent to join our team. Again, welcome to BP and the world of real estate!

As a PM, I'd say you need to start finding a new PM, but keep the current PM in place so you're not having to manage it yourself. It is always not advisable for owners to contact the tenants directly when there's already a PM in place. Depending on the tenant, they can end up calling you first instead of the PM. This is a classic example of creating more work for yourself needlessly. Sounds like you have a good tenant so you don't need to be as guarded, but as you move forward, make sure to carefully vet PMs and you'll avoid this problem. Bottom line, if your goal is to have a PM manage your property, then you need to avoid direct contact with the tenants.

Good thing about a 2 year is that you don't have to deal with the turnover costs and potential vacancy if the tenants leave after 1 year. One month of vacancy can easily wipe out a year or more of rent increases that you were planning. Of course, there's the risk that they're difficult tenants and you're stuck with them for 2 years, but if you have it managed through a property management company, then they're the ones dealing with the tenants, and not you.

No reason for you not to get a buyers agent. Commission is covered by the seller so unless you plan on getting a price reduction through not using an agent (not too likely in my opinion), then you're not really saving any money. Also, if this is a short sale, it's definitely worth it to get an agent. Banks require a ton of paperwork and documentation back and forth, and in Arizona, I've seen short sales take up to a year to close.

Pima county, AZ, I can have a tenant out in approx 3 weeks, to include the constable showing up at the front door. The eviction lawyer that my company used costs only $275 to do the deal, and then another $150 if it requires getting the constable involved to forcibly remove.

The thing to keep in mind that in my experience, there's already a lot of great technology solutions out there for property management. My company uses the most up to date software and we try to be as paperless as possible. However, I've found that the biggest factor in success of property management is the talent. PM is a very labor intensive and "boots on the ground" type of job, and the key is to hire and build your company with the best talent available. Emphasizing service and professionalism and a true caring of the portfolio is critical. Unlike most industries where you can automate a lot of the process, property management will always require people on the ground and in the field. Technology is a great supplement to make life easier for tenants and owners, but I think the more important factor is the people.

Arizona allows this, but requires that you treat that prepayment as a liability until the income is earned. In other words, you can't count that money as yours until that month hits where you can apply that prepayment. For example, if the property got wiped out in a tornado, got foreclosed on, etc, and your tenant was forced to move out, you'd be liable to refund them any prepayments. Not sure if this differs in other states, but I'd assume it's a common rule.

Make sure to check the HOA financial statements and budgets and assess their overall financial situation. How many owners are behind on dues? Do they have a good amount in reserves? Where's the money being spent? You'd be amazed at how condo HOAs can be poorly run. If your HOA runs out of money then you'll be at their mercy. Looks like a decent investment, but be sure to comb through those HOA financials.

Not sure what your budget is, or what scale you're at size wise, but you should definitely look into Propertyware. My property management company uses it for all of our operations (approx 300 units), and it has served us very well.

The epayment costs us I believe $50 a month to have, plus $.35 per ACH transaction (so anytime a tenant pays in, or we pay out an owner). However, we charge the tenants $1.50 transaction fee (probably will be raising it to $2.50 soon), and that more than covers all of our costs. 

The other great thing about Propertyware is that you can set all the auto charges that apply to a particular tenant ledger. For example, you have a $500 rent charge, and a $25 utility charge each month. You can create both to drop in on the tenant ledger every month on a set date (typically the 1st). You can also create a late fee calculator that will automatically update the late fees owed on the account until the tenant pays (you can even adjust it so that it only applies late fees if the total balance owed is above a certain minimum. This way you're not hitting them with late fees for a $8.00 balance or something).

You can also require that the balance be paid in full. This will protect you if you're in a state where acceptance of partial payments limits your ability to evict. 

Anyway, take a look to see if the cost makes sense. In my opinion, Propertyware probably doesn't make sense if you only have a small handful of properties. But once you get above a certain size, you should definitely start looking into these more powerful software solutions. 

@Tim Herndon thanks for the info. I've been looking into Podio and it seems pretty solid. I will shoot you a PM in the next few days, and I'd love to get your insight on how you've set yours up for wholesaling.

Thanks!