All Forum Posts by: Cliff H.

@Salim Katach did you ever get this bathroom renovated? General recommendation for LTR bathrooms: 

Mirrors not cabinets (that break + cost 4x the price of straight wall mirror clipped on)

One piece vanities + countertops are ~$100 and an easy DIY project if you can keep the same faucet height and not have mess much with the plumbing lines. Definitely a must-do in this bath 

New toilet seat + keep the existing if still working. As others have said, quick swap of the flapper/rubbers in the tank are an easy proactive maintenance (you’ll do it now or at 12am, so just get it out of the way early) 

Tile concern is less about colors than condition of the ground/stability of the substructure. If there’s cracks/buckling tear it out and replace with a $300 three-piece snap together surround that’s an easy w/e project 

Assuming no closet, swap towel bar above the toilet with a basic over toilet cabinet

Replace tension mount shower rod with a permanent rod above the tile and a nice transparent shower liner and basic/light green patterned shower curtain that matches the light green towels you put in there for showings. 

If floor tile’s cracked/broken tear them up now since your subfloor’s likely equally damaged, wet, and mold-ridden. Easier to deal with now before fixtures go in than later when your floor sags from trapped moisture. Otherwise, consider LVP planking sheet vinyl to create a seal and update the look/feel on the cheap. 

Over-index on your ceiling exhaust fan to ensure you don’t have moisture and mildew build up, particularly since that window above the bath’s inordinately undersized and has a small shelf on it that just begs tenants to store leaky shampoo bottles that leak into your walls or collect moisture from the shower. 

Focus on cheap DIY shower heads and fancy accessories only after you’ve taken care of the basics, which is most often all about trapping rental-destroying moisture out of your walls/floors/ceilings. 

Hope this helps! 

@Hilary Graves as others have said pre-screening is different than pre-applying. You need both. Realtors and leasing agents are some of the most vulnerable workers out there for the simple reason that they’re exposed to situations that in any other sector would be considered dangerous or unacceptable: meeting strangers in vacant properties by themselves, collecting (often) cash payment on applications, walking strangers up/down stairs to areas of properties without windows or easy exit.

That’s a recipe for disaster and one reason (among many others) I switched all my showings to a fully automated, self service, and prescreened process. Many have thought this idea crazy: “how could you let a complete stranger in your house alone?!” The better question is, “why is property safety more important than personal safety?” 

We can talk all we want about differences in A/B/C class properties and that most people are good human beings and just looking to find their next home, but even if there's a 1 in 1000 chance of running into a serial killer with a nice voice on the phone why would any owner/Realtor/agent/PM take that chance? 

A few related reads that reinforce this unspoken reality:

• How Agent Deaths Spawned REALTOR® Action
• Broker beware: From robbery to assault, realty agents face big risks
• How a Real Estate Agent Survived Attack By Man She Was Showing a Home to
• Shock Study: More Than 50% of Realtors Carry Weapons on Showings
  

Assuming we are talking about one of the metal, covered fire pits that keeps the big embers inside or is this an uncovered hole in the ground, aka a house burner? 

This question is as old as Netflix itself. 

100% BYOS. 

You don’t want to manage passwords, have guests making purchases against your account, have your account locked out, or explain to your cleaner how to find the % character on a 9 button TV remote do you? 

If Netflix matters to someone they have it already and know how to log into their account on your TV. 

The question is not whether a guest wants your Netflix, but how they can access their Netflix. 

Roku TVs have a built-in guest mode for exactly this purpose. 

So does Alexa.

@Louis Zameryka are you typing the same thing into more than one place? That’s when. Your time is money, make more of it. 

@Greg Williamson built a lot on Wordpress and after setting up enough sites I’ve come to the realization that most users really ought to stick with something like Wix or others. Wordpress sites are extremely easy to compromise if you don’t install security tools and keep your site auto-updating. In fact, I can say with almost complete confidence that if you don’t have a site auto-updating and secured it *will* be compromised at some point and you will lose data.

@Sam Goldsmith understood and equally a platform that's not deemed to be libel, which is a real legal concern for any service aiming to be an impartial review site. Consider the many sites or platforms that have been spun up for victims of sexual assault, many of which are crushed by legal action by the accused, regardless of the heinous nature of the original acts. In our modern world where anyone can say anything, agreed that validating what is true, false, or, in fact, sponsored misinformation is the essential (and still largely unsolved) paradigm of our era. 

@Sam Goldsmith once you start talking about a platform play in a space where data gets stale quickly or is easily gamed you’re talking about products that don’t often make sense. Perhaps a better question is, “how do you verify a tenants’ references are legitimate?” How do you know the person you are calling ain’t their best friend? Are you checking their ID? Going to their house? Checking state eviction records? Aware that most of the $19.95 national eviction searches are only hitting on cases that were actually legally executed (ie: the minority of cases filed)?

All these “soft” real world considerations are what make tenant screening a process that’s quite hard to automate. At best maybe you hire some outsourced help to do the work for you, but beyond verification of tenant employment/pay through a (now defunct) service called https://tenantify.com I’ve rarely found a better solution for screening than playing detective, asking questions only a former landlord would know, showing up to see how a tenant lives now, and all the other tips other folks here in the forums have long shared.

Screening’s hard and harder still knowing that the only guarantee in this industry is that if you play the game long enough you WILL encounter a professional fraudster that fools you and costs you lost rent.

@Louis Zameryka if you're cashflow negative with management I would have real concerns in your investment. Granted initial STR income is generally lower until you accrue reviews/credibility, but overhead will also be higher than you estimate, squeezing potential profits even more.

All STRs numbers are inherent local, but if you're not seeing higher margins than traditional LTRs (which have a much lower overhead) why go STR at all? Is there an option to convert the place into a higher margin LTR as well or is STR the only play on this prop?

@Ian M. I’ve experienced similar delayed response on support as well Ian. As they say, when you’re not paying for support that’s exactly what kind of support you get!

Curious: was the download issue you saw the inability to exports reports on their mobile app? I worked with them for a few weeks troubleshooting that one and the fix did make it into a newer release a couple weeks later.