All Forum Posts by: Clay Kallman

If you require cosignors for each resident, that solves a lot of problems with damages and skips. 

Thanks Clifford, I'm getting closer to an answer, there are distributors that do this and I just had to find them.

We are getting quotes for upgrading appliances for multiple apartments at once. Which manufacturer tends to have the best service and quality these days for apartment grade appliance packages? Most of our apartments have GE appliances, but we've found them harder and harder to get parts for in recent years.

We are replacing kitchen appliances in 45 units, and I've got to believe there are people in this community that do this far more often than we do and can offer advice on vendors and logistics.

These are occupied units where we have already upgraded countertops and cabinetry, and are now just looking to install a new stainless fridge/dw/stove/microwave in each one. They are 3 story walk-up garden style apartment buildings. 

I have a maintenance crew that could handle this, but would rather not have them dedicated to this many installs as I assumed the vendors would do this far more efficiently. However, the ones I've talked to so far (Chadwell Supply and GE Direct) were surprisingly expensive for installation services and made it sound like asking them to install and haul away was unusual. Even breaking up delivery dates into a manageable schedule did not seem normal. Are there typical arrangements I'm missing when talking to these vendors or am I talking with the wrong people? Do these larger appliance vendors operate differently in different markets and we're just in a smaller market where very few operators order 150+ appliances at once?

While I'm asking -- are there common pitfalls to be aware of in this kind of project? We've done these kinds of upgrades on a smaller scale. Thank you for any assistance you can provide.

We've done this in a variety of ways. For small buildings it's been easiest to just put a decent router (we've been using ubiquiti's edgemax routers) and switch in a communal closet and then drop ethernet ports to each living room via cat6. Tenants then install their own wireless router and can set their own passwords for security. We pay for the primary connection to the ISP but point out that it saves each resident significantly over buying their own individual connections.

There is a downside that as since we are the ISP customer, if a tenant is misusing the network we have to hunt them down as the ISP will look to us to solve the problem. Much of that can be proactively fixed through port blocking and sending all tenants STOP IT type emails.

I always try to build side by side if I'm building to rent (and hold long term). Repairs are less expensive, it's also less expensive to replace just the washer or dryer, rather than buy a whole new stackable if just the washer or dryer breaks beyond repair. 

Stackables make the closet area more difficult to access. I've seen people build a panel on the side of a stackable closet just to be able to get in to reattach the dryer vent, or fish out errant clothing, etc. 

The all-in-one combination units I've had success with on 1 bedroom remodels, but they allow a smaller load per cycle, and take a long time to go through a whole wash/dry cycle. I think they would not be appropriate for larger units with more washing/drying done.

Keep in mind sometimes the "standard" is *not* what you want. If everywhere you look in a market the supply is mostly 2x2s or 4x4s or 2x1s, you may benefit from investing in a community that is a different product type so that you can differentiate from the rest of the market. If a particular floorplan is oversupplied in a market, it can become commoditized and face pricing pressure.

Code may be different depending on municipality, but here's what we've found managing/building all three:

2 phone lines required for fire alarm systems BUT multiple buildings can be connected physically together by cable, such that only the primary panel must have 2 phone lines, the other panels can just talk to the primary for reporting purposes. We did this several years ago for a group of 5 buildings that were on separate panels and there was significant savings.

1 phone line can be shared with office phone lines or fax lines. The purpose of the fire lines is to be able to dial out to report to the monitoring company that all systems are normal or to report a fire, they don't have to be dedicated 24/7. Combining lines can be a savings as long as you configure the dial-out for monitoring/reporting to be sometime like 5am when no one in the office would likely be using the phone.

Cellular and radio-repeater service is allowed for fire monitoring now in our municipality and since we've enabled it so far so good. 

Elevators are now being delivered for new construction with cellular installed upon request, and the most recent one we had installed has had no issues. I don't have any experience upgrading a phone line based elevator to cell communication, but our Schindler rep says it's fairly straightforward.

Put in LVT, just make sure the surface is properly prepped and smooth with all carpet tack glue removed and unlevel surfaces repaired. Otherwise it can show through once the LVT is laid and has been walked on a bit. But overall we've found LVT that looks great in rentals and only costs about twice as much as carpet, but is far more durable and much easier to maintain. If you are selling it in two years you will have LVT that still looks brand new, or carpet that looks worn.

Your biggest electricity usage is typically HVAC (which could be greatly affected by differences in shading and building orientation) followed by water heating. You could also have different lighting, different photocell locations (causing lights to turn on and off different lengths of the evening or even turn on when it's just cloudy outside) and plenty of other differences. Good news is that unlike water, electricity doesn't typically leak away out of sight, so something is using it.

You can take meter readings 24 hours apart for several days to see if changes you make can alter the usage rate.