All Forum Posts by: Bonnie Low

It does happen, particularly when renting to travel nurses who are at risk of having their contracts shortened by the hospitals or recruiting agencies. I do two things: 1) I put specific language in my lease agreements that I need 30-days notice for early termination and 2) I also put language in the agreement that the security deposit can be kept if the renter terminates early. I do this more as a CYA than anything. I've only ever had this happen once - my very first guest had her hospital contract cancelled early and I had no language at all in my agreement because I was too new to know it was a risk. Since then, I increased my security deposit to cover more than a half month's rent should I need to use it. Fortunately, it hasn't happened again. Check your state laws to see what is allowed and use a state-specific lease.

 I use Baselane, too, and haven't found it to be glitchy. I do like the ability to set up multiple accounts and sub accounts and I don't believe there's any limit. I also like being able to set up virtual credit cards and time them to individual properties. It just takes an extra step out of the bookkeeping when you automatically know what property it's associated with. I couldn't find any of these features at brick and mortar banks. I don't know that any platform has everything you're going to want - I haven't found one yet but this is as close as I've gotten. Personally, I'm hoping they bring on a portal for tenant maintenance requests. That's my top priority for wish list items and no brick and mortar bank can help with that, lol.

You have to be in control of the situation. If you understand what the property's ARV is based on your exit strategy and you understand how to estimate rehab costs, you are in the drivers seat. You should never depend on the wholesaler to tell you either of these things. And in my experience (we have bought from wholesalers) I haven't found one yet that knows how to accurately estimate rehab costs. If you control these things, you're in the drivers seat. You don't have to pay what they're asking. If they got it under contract for too much, move on to the next property. Ideally, you'll find a wholesaler you can really work with who will involve you before they get the house under contract so that the contracted price works for everyone, including the seller.

As a Baselane user and fellow landlord, I really want to understand how this went down and what I can do to protect myself. I really love Baselane’s features and have always found them to be responsive and considerate. At the same time, I don’t want to open myself up to risks that can be avoided. I’d like to ask @Saad D. from Baselane to weigh in. Is this issue specific to Baselane or is this something broader that affects other platforms as well? I’m always looking to implement best management practices so what can I, as a landlord, do to protect myself when accepting online payments? I don't see any scenario in the future where I don't have to accept some type of online payment, especially because I manage most of my properties remotely and I cater to midterm guests who are usually not in the area when they're sending in their deposit and first month's rent so I HAVE to be able to accept online payments. Virtually no one uses paper checks these days and those have their own issues. So what is the answer?

A high end luxury home like this may be possible as a midterm rental but it's definitely extremely niche. You may have luck pursuing an insurance placement, though I question how many similar properties there are in Greenville and therefore what the demand may be. Nevertheless, I'd list it on ALE Solutions and other insurance placement sites to see if you get any traction. I'd also network with other Realtors to identify clients relocating to the area looking for temporary placement while they find or build their new home. This is likely your target market. Lastly, as @Arn Cenedella, reach out to some of the large corporations in your area to see if they need executive housing. 

 Thanks for the explanation. I don't accept credit card payments for this very reason. It now makes me question whether other platforms, like Avail, are also allowing the tenant to pay via credit card and we as landlords are just unaware of the mechanism because it's a side of the transaction we don't have visibility into. I'll definitely be looking into this further. 

 I'm trying to better understand what you're saying happened. As I understand it: tenant paid rent through Baselane's portal. Tenant decides to cancel and requests a refund. Baselane issues refund. Baselane is now trying to collect the refunded amount from you? If this were to happen, wouldn't they be issuing a refund via your account, in which case there's nothing else they need to collect? I've never heard of this happening before so I'm curious. 

Your LLCs are mostly for asset protection. You typically want at least one in every state you're doing business. Some people use a rule of thumb of not having more than $250k in equity in your properties that are inside the LLC to make it less likely you are sued. Tom Wheelwright has some good books on this and how to structure it for liability protection and tax purposes. I've personally set up my LLCs following the per state and $250k equity rule and I do have a separate bank account for each LLC and sub accounts for each property. I use Baselane as my banking and bookkeeping platform, which makes this very easy to do. Everything is tied to the master account, which is my holding company, then broken down into sub accounts per LLC and per property. I also have virtual credit cards assigned to the various properties. It's layered, which in many ways isn't simple, but it does make it much easier to do my taxes at the end of the year because of this layering. Everything is dropped into the right categories and assigned to the right properties because I have it set up this way. You either spend the time categorizing your revenue and expenditures as you go (easier) or at the end of the year (harder IMO). And you are totally right, bookkeeping is a headache no matter what unless you're just really good at it, but necessary for your business. 

 We were paying our bookkeeper $450/mo plus I was spending another $90/mo on our Quickbooks subscription. We have 5 doors. To me, it was way too much so I decided to take on bookkeeping myself. Unfortunately, I learned very quickly that QB was too complicated for me to use. I looked at several different bookkeeping platforms and ended up choosing Baselane. It's easy enough for me to use myself and has a lot of other features that help me manage my rental portfolio and take more of the day-to-day management in house, like vetting tenants, collecting security deposits and rents and its other banking features. At this point, I wouldn't go back to paying a bookkeeper. The other benefit of doing it myself is that it's forced me to be much more involved and to better understand the finances of my investing business. It's led to better accountability. 

We fought with Quickbooks for years. It was very complicated and cumbersome to set up properly and difficult to use. We ended up having to pay a professional bookkeeper monthly to manage it. Between her fees and the QBO subscription, we were spending over $500 per month just for bookkeeping. And it was frustrating that every time we wanted a new report we had to have her set it up for us. Unless you have an accounting or bookkeeping background, I don't recommend it. In my opinion, it's overkill. For this reason, I was looking for a different solution that we could manage ourselves. I looked at several different platforms and ended up going with Baselane. It's easy enough for me to do myself. Very intuitive. And built by real estate investors for real estate investors so you get the bookkeeping categories you need with no extra baggage you're paying for but not using. I have multiple properties and LLCs, some I self manage and others I use a property management company for. It suits my needs, it's free, it has consolidated a lot of things I used to have to use different platforms for and I like the HY savings account. You may have already purchased QBO or are midway through using it, but if you're still researching, check out Baselane before you decide.