In our experience, the #1 mistake landlords make when selecting a Property Management Company (PMC) is ASSUMING instead of CONFIRMING.

A little bit of maintenance like this once in a while is par for the course on these old buildings and what the reserves are for.

Secondly, I would like to know how much I should keep in reserves?

I will make my  $10,000 for my reserve account in 11 months by doing my 5% hold backs for vacancy cap X and maintenance.

In our experience, the #1 mistake landlords make when selecting a Property Management Company (PMC) is ASSUMING instead of CONFIRMING.

To your surprise and your partners complete frustration, your offer is accepted, and your partner is like, "Where's the money going to come from," because, sure we have emergency reserves, but this is like six-figures of cash, but it just so happens that we have the cash in our HELOC because it's not Lessons learned?

In our experience, the #1 mistake landlords make when selecting a Property Management Company (PMC) is ASSUMING instead of CONFIRMING.

You do need plenty of reserves. 

Those lenders are usually more savvy and may ask you to provide a zoning certificate from the building department confirming the number of legal units (which sounds like it's 5 rather than 7).

I'm from Chicagoland area, and I'm running into a lot of duplexs that have confirmed tenants.