All Forum Posts by: Caitlin Cartwright

Lower tier rental properties are a profit center, unfortunately rarely for the owner. Just look at  Alan's example which is an accurate depiction of how these properties often pan out when viewed through an extended time period. Regardless of whether the owner turns a profit, brokers are called up on to sell, lease and manage, lenders will finance, contractors (often affiliated with PM companies will be called upon to put out the constant fires). In fact, the more issues that arise, the more profitable theses properties become for the ancillary service providers....and you want to know why these investments are pushed aggressively by so many (besides of course requiring nothing more than a pulse to buy them). 

We subscribed to RentRedi because they are listed on BiggerPockets. We stuck with them for a painful year using their clunky system. Then we started slowly moving our tenants over to another software and canceled RentRedi last month. A couple of days ago, they took an automatic payment from one of our tenants! After we canceled. They forced me to subscribe so I could go “fix it.” So I had to pay the subscription fee. Our tenants rent did not get deposited into our account. Yet, RentRedi took that full rent out of OUR checking account. I feel like they stole over $2000 from us, and acted on our authority with our tenants after we canceled. Plus, since I had to resubscribe, all of our tenants started getting late notices. Personally, I don’t see how they can continue ongoing billing or anything after we cancel. I shouldn’t have to go in and individually delete every tenant and every account just because I want to cancel. When I cancel, I cancel. I’ll be checking today to see whether what they did was something for our attorney or for law enforcement, but I have never seen a company act so irresponsibly.

Goodmorning BP family- I have added an additional single family house to my portfolio so I am now house hacking two homes. Both of them are by the bedroom and this new one I just completed a master bedroom build added on to the back of the house with a private entrance for myself so I’m currently renting out the other 3 beds.Which cost me thousands more than I expected due to contractors not performing like I had expected etc etc. So needless to say that I need the rents coming in.

my problem that I have is that one of my first tenants brings his girlfriend over every night and they argue by slamming doors and disturbing my other tenants. I have talked to both of them because I only rented to the guy and he told me that he was single before signing the lease. I then find him bringing her around still and now she has a key to the house. How I know this is that I have recently put up cameras outside the house. I’m not sure how I can stop this in the best way possible.

Please any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hello!  My current tenants have been hearing a beeping noise for the last month and a half or so.  My first thought was to change the batteries in a fire/smoke alarm, carbon monoxide detectors, etc. - or some other electronic device.  We've removed devices, unplugged appliances, changed filters, I've had plumbers out to see the hot water heater, I've had appliance guys out to check the fridge - they haven't been able to pinpoint where the sound is coming from and everytime I've been there for 1-2 hour chunks at a time to look around for anything I haven't heard it.

UNTIL TODAY.  The beeping is a 4 second beep that appears to be coming from the basement.   The timing is entirely random, sometimes more than 24 hours apart, sometimes every 30-45 minutes. The tenants swear it's on one side near the washer/dryer - both have been unplugged and they've still heard it.  To mine and my wife's ears it sounded like it was on the opposite side near the circuit breaker, furnace, and modem/router.

One of the tenants was very concerned about the possibility of it being dangerous - possibly carbon monoxide, and this morning mentioned that she would be staying in a hotel until it's resolved, so I had the fire department out today to check for carbon monoxide and they didn't find anything and they even told her pretty much what I've been saying this entire time which is - you might need to sit down in the basement until you hear it and move closer and closer to where it's coming from until you can figure it out.  The truth is, I don't think they want to do that, and are expecting me to do it.  Because the beep happens at random intervals or sometimes days apart, this seems unreasonable to me.

As a last ditch effort, I am having our electric, hvacs, and washer and dryer looked at.  All these service calls will have cost me close to $1000.  But, this is probably cheaper than also throwing in a hotel bill on top of it and I do understand their frustration so I'm willing to do that.  The only other thing I can think of is to setup microphones around the basement and see which has the loudest audio wave when I import it into garageband and narrow down the location that way.  

I guess my question is this:  Does anyone have ANY idea of what it could possibly be? OR any advice on how best to handle the situation if I am handling it incorrectly?  

Thank you!