What do you guys name each of your rental properties? To keep track of them all. For example, right now I only have 2 rental properties in 2 different cities, so I call them Pleasant Grove house and Saratoga Springs house. But if you have 10 rental properties in one city, how do you keep track of what expense go to each and everything else? What do you call them to keep track of them all? Do you call them house 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. or do you name them by the street name (1743 W. and 1036 S.)? Just curious what everyone else is going to stay organized as you manager your properties.
Rental Property Investor · Sumter, SC · Member since 2015 · 334 posts · 531 votes
7y
While they're being rehabbed they usually have unpleasant nicknames - The Roach Motel (full of dead ones), The Dog House (smelled like wet dog inside), the Crack Shack (found an old crack pipe someone left in the electrical box)...
Once they're all prettied up and rented we just go by the street name, Columbia Ave., Drexel Dr., etc. As far as expenses, I just use a simple Excel spreadsheet and an old school notebook to write down info about each house (if it's on well or septic, city water, which electric company, school districts, etc.). Probably wouldn't work for someone with 100 doors, but I'm just small potatoes and it works for me.
Investor · Fernandina Beach, FL · Member since 2014 · 557 posts · 374 votes
7y
@Braden Anderson I call them by their street name, "Main St." unless they are in a town I don't usually invest in. Then I find myself calling them by the town name. I'm a low volume investor and have never owned 2 on the same street.
Real Estate Agent · Cleveland, OH · Member since 2019 · 359 posts · 295 votes
7y
@Braden Anderson I use street name but also I like to get creative every now and then and use whatever reminds me of the house lol. For example, I have a duplex with bowed/uneven floors when i first bought it, reminded me of alice in wonderland (because of the crazy appearance, tons of bunnies that burrowed there, tall hedges, and lots of greenery) so i call it wonderland. Of course this is hard when you have more than a few. I keep hard file folders and a computer file folder on each property with a picture of it and property info/data on the front.
Rental Property Investor · Indiana...mostly · Member since 2019 · 468 posts · 245 votes
7y
I use the house/apartment #. So far I haven't had a duplicate. Not sure yet what I'd do if I buy 123 First Street and 123 Second Street since my system wouldn't allow me to use "123" twice.
Handyman · Pittsburgh, PA · Member since 2018 · 5k+ posts · 13k+ votes
7y
Usually street names, and that's the name that is usee for tracking expenses. But occasionally, like when you have two properties on the same street or a duplex, it gets more interesting. You get names like Maple Right or 18th Near. Maple is a duplex with two sides, right and left, 18th Near is a shorter drive from us than 18th Far. And then there's color for some properties: I used to have a place I called "The Devil's Mother" because in Greek, the equivalent expression for "the middle of nowhere" is "where the devil's mother lives." There's also "Hoho," for "House of Horrors," which a fellow landlord bought and had all kinds of rigging in it from previous owners trying to be creative and cheap with the fixing, I called it that when I went over there and the name stuck, he still talks about how Hoho is giving him trouble. Hoho is not the same as "Christmas," a property near us that we looked at in June a few years ago that still had a tree and lights up.
Rental Property Investor · East Wenatchee, WA · Member since 2014 · 10k+ posts · 16k+ votes
7y
Labor camp 1, Labor camp 2... gets confusing after about 4 LOL.
Street names mostly. Apt complexes have nicknames like Old Bank Apts or Leslie. One started as a bank & theater in 1906, the other a Dr had built in 1913 named Leslie and it used to be a hospital. Old Hospital apts didn't have a good ring to it to me.
Rental Property Investor · Sumter, SC · Member since 2015 · 334 posts · 531 votes
7y
While they're being rehabbed they usually have unpleasant nicknames - The Roach Motel (full of dead ones), The Dog House (smelled like wet dog inside), the Crack Shack (found an old crack pipe someone left in the electrical box)...
Once they're all prettied up and rented we just go by the street name, Columbia Ave., Drexel Dr., etc. As far as expenses, I just use a simple Excel spreadsheet and an old school notebook to write down info about each house (if it's on well or septic, city water, which electric company, school districts, etc.). Probably wouldn't work for someone with 100 doors, but I'm just small potatoes and it works for me.
Rental Property Investor · NC · Member since 2018 · 776 posts · 776 votes
7y
@Dawn P. it’s funny you say that because I do the same thing. I never recognize the addresses. But when I look for the nickname, it instantly pops up in my head
I didn't know others gave them name-- that's great! When you have more than 5, IMO it's absolutely necessary! We normally give them a name based on it's looks/vibe, but if nothing is really unique-- we do street names, and then if we own multiple on a street-- we call it by the tenants name.
We have a houses called the Hoard, Show Pony, Dinky, Prison, Jungle.... but then we also have Commerce Str, Wythe,.. and then the standard "Tom's house."
Investor · Glen Burnie, MD · Member since 2019 · 51 posts · 26 votes
7y
@Braden Anderson I have a question for you Braden. After reading some of the responses, seems the majority go by the street name or a reminder name. Do you feel like giving it a name promotes an emotional attachment to a property? Like it would if you had a pet. Would it be bad to just use numbers? (More than one question I know but they pulled up so quickly)
Handyman · Pittsburgh, PA · Member since 2018 · 5k+ posts · 13k+ votes
7y
It's nice to know how the hands-on DIY people are all pretty much the same. Dinky and The Crack Shack...perfect! So when you talk to your spouses, you add on the layer of wife/husband talk and it's all pretty much incomprehensible to third parties. Part of letting people is gradually teaching them the Code, and sometimes they add to it, too.
Got a question for you guys...is it also true for you that the more pretentious the street name, the faster it gets a different nickname? For us, "Montclair" very quickly became "Foursquare" and the prospect with the bad basement on Lear Street didn't make it a day before it was "Sump-o."
Specialist · Easton, PA · Member since 2018 · 1k+ posts · 2k+ votes
7y
@Braden Anderson
My properties I call them by house #. Properties that I take care of for my clients are either house # or I have names for some of them, not all are good names haha
Investor · Columbus, OH · Member since 2015 · 625 posts · 601 votes
7y
@Dawn P. That's awesome. I'm working on one right now that had a huge spray painted sign in it that said "Trap House", the bums living in it before I bought it named it for me lol.
We don't have pretentious where we invest. We do have 1 street, that I have nicknamed "Rich Row" It is great to see how certain people invest/think a like!
Lol it's literately like a different language to others! If the name is positive, we'll tell the tenant-- ie: 1 house is named "95" since it was built in 95, but I can't see me telling any tenants that we call the house the prison. In my defense, it's a cinder block house, cinder block walls, and it's boarded up now, so it's a legit prison scenario!
One thing I've noticed, is that the "friendlier" (ie: friendship court, hope street, etc) the name of the street-- the worse and unfriendly it is!
Flipper/Rehabber · Bellevue, WA · Member since 2018 · 35 posts · 17 votes
7y
I tend to use the Street Address, City LLC method as I have multiple portfolios to manage and I group most of those by City/State. Commercial properties are generally Bldg Name Building, LLC to separate them from the residential properties.
We don't have pretentious where we invest. We do have 1 street, that I have nicknamed "Rich Row" It is great to see how certain people invest/think a like!
Lol it's literately like a different language to others! If the name is positive, we'll tell the tenant-- ie: 1 house is named "95" since it was built in 95, but I can't see me telling any tenants that we call the house the prison. In my defense, it's a cinder block house, cinder block walls, and it's boarded up now, so it's a legit prison scenario!
One thing I've noticed, is that the "friendlier" (ie: friendship court, hope street, etc) the name of the street-- the worse and unfriendly it is!
That's hilarious. I used to live on the corner of Gano and Angell St. In Providence, RI, and Angell is most famous for being the street that HP Lovecraft, the horror writer, used to lived on.
We don't have pretentious where we invest. We do have 1 street, that I have nicknamed "Rich Row" It is great to see how certain people invest/think a like!
Lol it's literately like a different language to others! If the name is positive, we'll tell the tenant-- ie: 1 house is named "95" since it was built in 95, but I can't see me telling any tenants that we call the house the prison. In my defense, it's a cinder block house, cinder block walls, and it's boarded up now, so it's a legit prison scenario!
One thing I've noticed, is that the "friendlier" (ie: friendship court, hope street, etc) the name of the street-- the worse and unfriendly it is!
There is a street in New Orleans called "Bunny Friend St." It borders Bunny Friend park. And there was a mass shooting in that park a few years ago where 16 people at a party were shot.
Funny enough, Bunny Friend St. is actually named after a person. Their nickname was Bunny and their last name was, indeed, Friend.
Investor · New Orleans, LA · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 944 votes
7y
I name my properties after the street they are on. Sometimes we'll abbreviate the street name if it's a weird or long name. I own three duplexes but, oddly enough, none of them have even sides. So we'll call the units Big (street name) and Small (street name).
For example, one of them is on a street called Nemours. It's a duplex with a 4 bd/2ba and a 2bd/2ba. It's nicknamed Big Neems and Small Neems.
But I'm already having to adjust my strategy, lol. I'm about to close on two duplexes next to each other and on the same street. The properties and units are identical to each other, but the properties are totally different colors. The street name is an odd one that no one knows how to pronounce right the first time...Elizardi. I am already calling them Brown Lizard and Yellow Lizard with my husband. Though with my realtor and anyone else I've been working with, I use the street numbers/names and the terms "left" duplex and "right" duplex.
Buy and Hold Investor · Cranston, RI · Member since 2013 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
7y
@Scott Marshall I used to base the name of the LLC on the property it was meant to contain.
However I found over time, that I sometimes needed an LLC for a different purpose, and then I started to wish I'd chosen more generic names.
(It's not always as easy as "just create another LLC", sometimes due to time/logistical limitations and sometimes due to the extra ongoing expense & complexity of another entity.)
These days, I actually think I prefer LLC names as generic and boring as possible, so they don't stand out and aren't easy to Google - a kind of pseudo-anonymity.