All Forum Posts by: Alex Furini

@MC Crosby Thanks for your comment on @Frank Chin.

Frank, I went through a lot of your old posts as well and realized:

A). I had read a lot of these before without making the connection they were all one person.

B). You posses a wealth of information regarding a great deal of the same issues I run into. Its great to see the long term viewpoint. 

You cant put a price on solid advice.

Just wanted to say thanks for all the great info. Fantastic advice and extremely eye opening. Keep it up!

Alex Furini

Rentprep.com has worked great for me. I have used them for the past 5 years and they are out of NY. Good luck with your rentals.

If you are not familiar with Evictions, I would recommend finding an attorney who does this regularly. Evictions have very detailed city specific requirements. The entire process can actually be nullified and restarted if you miss a requirement. Best to let an attorney do this and take it as a learning session in case you need (hopefully not) to go this route again in the future. Im in NYC, which is probably without a doubt more painful eviction wise, but the sooner you act the better. These things can have a way of getting drawn out prior to action being taken. Additionally, a letter from a lawyer has its own weight which can be very effective. Unfortunately these situations happen, but with proper future tenant screening, you can lessen your future risk. Best of Luck.

Michael, This answer to your question is dependent on your specific property. Lot size, size of existing building, zoning review, F.A.R.(allowable buildable SF on your property etc. You would need a feasibility study to determine what is and isnt possible based upon the as built conditions of your property. PM me if interested.

@Remone R., For those 2 tenants, I would still have everything set up in TC so I could view the info, but just obviously not connected to the tenants. For the rent payments I would provide them my a business bank acct # to deposit the funds directly into. I'm just not a fan of scheduling rent pickups / face to face monthly meetups or the variable of uncertainty mailing a check presents. If its in my account directly, I know its paid on time. There's a million ways to go about it. Venmo is great to, but I assume if they don't use the internet they definitely don't use an app such as Venmo.

For starters, I would transition my rent collection, leases, maintenance requests to an online system. I personally use Tenantcloud for the past 4-5 years. Many people Use Cozy or similar. These allow you to have a centralized hub to manage your properties from. Lease reminders, communication, Automatic invoicing, tenant pay portals, maintenance requests with photos/videos, and much more. You can even list from the site onto other sites. Take a look, it may help to provide you some more peace of mind as you can see a complete overview of your properties from afar. Of course you will need a good maintenance guy on the ground, but if the tenants notify you of the issue, you only need to send to your maintenance guy. System has worked great for me. I cant even imagine having to pick up rents individually at this point. So much more free time once your billing is automated.

Alex,

Your next step would be to hire an architect. They will guide you through the process and can start to help you formulate an overall understanding of whats involved. I.e. cost, zoning, construction etc.

Good luck with your project.

@Bin Chen. Ill just add my two cents as a investor who self manages in NYC.

I run an architecture firm full time and self manage, maintain, and list all my properties. Screening tenants myself is important enough that I find time in my schedule to do it.

My response is from the point of a small landlord less than 20 units. If you are one of the big boys and have a bunch more properties or items on your plate, then this doesn't really apply to you in my mind.

I find that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. The only person who is looking out for your best interests is you. That is not to say Brokers aren't hard working individuals, but in the end it's your property and once the lease is signed their job is done. You however, are linked to the newly acquired tenants for a year minimum.

I personally would rather spend my time screening the tenants. As most landlords will tell you, a bad tenant can really try your nerves and/or bank acct. Trust me I know, and I will do just about anything to avoid bad tenants. In NYC evictions can take 6 months  min easily. 

With a broker, you are not screening the tenants the way you would really want to. I.E. Phone screenings, screening them in person during the showing, screening all their documents personally, etc. etc. We all have different processes set up for screening tenants. It's multi step and a good solid screening process is paramount. With a broker, the screening pretty much starts and ends with the credit/background and documents. I have had plenty of potential tenants come view properties who had amazing credit and income, but horrible personality traits which would make them nightmare tenants. As a self managing landlord, my job is to spot the bad eggs in the very limited amount of interaction time I have. People can look great on paper, reality can be quite the opposite.

I have tried using a broker twice over the last few years because it is taxing time wise to fill apartments. My experiences were less than stellar. In the end with both, I ended up finding qualified tenants to fill the vacancies instead of the broker. 

Good luck.

@Michinori Kaneko, I did the BRRRR strategy minus 1 R. Bought, Renovated, Rented and Repeated. I did not refinance because I have a nice interest rate on the original 30 year note and to me the HELOC is essentially a refinance for the added equity in the house. I used the monthly cash flow from my rents to pay down the HELOC.

I also used excess monthly fund from my day job to hack away at the HELOC as well. Personally, I wanted to be HELOC free as soon as possible for my own peace of mind.

@Diana Tian and @Sen A., thank you for these resources. As an investor in Brooklyn, my mindset was that rent control is a remnant from the past. As long as I didn't buy into an existing rent control building I was fine. I was actually looking at 2-3 families in Union city without knowledge of this change. I guess if you buy a vacant 3 family as non owner occupied the rents would be set/registered at whatever market rate you rent them out at.(assuming the tenants were not forced out) I'm guessing based upon NYC, if its rent controlled your chances of finding a vacant building is slim.

 Just to avoid as many landmines as possible, is this just union city, or is this common in NJ areas adjacent to NYC? 3 fam, 4 fam etc.

Appreciate the knowledge!