All Forum Posts by: Christian Styles

Hey Dillon! Welcome to BP! Glad to have you! 

I'm located in Cleveland, OH and happy to help out with any questions you might have about the market! There's a lot of fantastic people on here and tons of knowledge and wisdom to consume! You're in the right place!

Hey Dee, BiggerPockets support is super friendly and quick on their feet. 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/contact-us#customer-support

Scroll down to the bottom of the page there's a contact form you can fill out and they typically respond in a few hours. 

Good luck!

Potentially able to help you find someone but I would need to know specifically where the property is in order to know who to recommend. 

This is completely up to you, If an individual came around with perfect credit and met your other income requirements I assume you would rent to that person. So does a bad credit roommate/co-applicant bring their application down enough to warrant denying them? 

There are many alternatives you can use, I would urge you to check your local laws but I know here in Cleveland, OH we can charge an increased deposit or we can also require a guarantor (who can have different credit req. then someone living in the unit) 

It's important that no matter what you do you do it for everyone going forward, making exceptions for screening for some but not all can become a Fair Housing issue. 

Happy to talk to you more and run through our screening process for tenants more in depth. Shoot me a PM. 

Hi April! Welcome to BP! Glad to have you and thank you for your service!

Hey Chris, I definitely see your train of thought on removing the ancient door buzzer system. I recently consulted on a new build 8 units per entrance, so similar mix, and can hopefully offer some insight.

They opted not to put guest access control in and instead installed a key fob system for their tenants, with the expectation that they would just go let guests in by walking down the stairs and opening the door for them. 

What ended up happening, almost immediately, was the entrance doors would just get propped open using rocks, sticks, anything the residents could find so they wouldn't have to go back for each subsequent guest. This led to non-residents/non-guests gaining access to the building which in turn led to tenant complaints and unfortunately may lead to a tenant(s) eventually leaving the property. They are now looking at retrofitting a guest access solution. 

If the existing system is already on its way out the door then removing it may not affect the tenants that much as they are used to its unreliability and you may be fine. 

I'm sure a more modern solution like Swiftlane will come at a price, but it may save you from some headaches with building security and tenant retention.

No matter what you decide, congratulations on the 8 units thats awesome! 

We do significant business in 44102 and 44113 and occasionally there is a "bad egg" but typically tenants that we place and do not "inherit" with the property are great and leave the property in good condition. I never want to knock a particular neighborhood but 44110 can be a very tricky place to do business, I imagine turnover expenses there will always trend a little higher. 

Since you're out of state, if you ever need a sanity check from someone local on anything let me know I'm happy to help! 

Hey Luka, sorry you're not loving Cleveland at the moment, I'm interested to know specifically where your properties are located. We've found that there are neighborhoods in the Cleveland Metro where it's nearly impossible to cashflow, As Jay said tenant quality being one of the main motivators behind that.

This seems to be in the ballpark, but I would have a few follow up questions,

 Is this their entire fee structure? 

Typically tenant placement is the first month of rent so 100 bucks seems a little on the low side, what are they doing to advertise your property that they are able to do it for only 100 bucks?

I know we typically charge 5 percent of vendor maintenance and repairs but 10 may be the norm in your area. (I'm in Cleveland, OH) 

I'm happy to look over your PM agreement if you want an extra set of eyes, always seem to find something of value in those! 

Can you tell us a little about the property they would be managing too? That information is helpful when trying to asses fees. 

Also, Congratulations on entering the wonderful world of REI! Happy to have you here!