All Forum Posts by: Corina Eufinger

Welcome! I believe you will find a lot of value in the discussions and information here. Since you are interested in networking be sure one of your key word alerts is set to Wisconsin and that you have neighboring zip codes under your profile for areas you operate. Buying one property year is a very sound plan and a very reasonable goal.

Best of luck!

Good luck and welcome! I've been around for about 2 weeks now and find the discussion on the boards very informative. Be sure to set up your key word alerts, those help a lot for keeping you up to date on your region and the topics you are interested in. 

Welcome! I would suggest starting by narrowing down the area you want to invest in then research the area and market thoroughly. Consider the potential growth (or reduction) in the housing demands, be familiar with rental prices and home sales so you can make an informed decision. 

Good luck!

I deal with this type of situation in Illinois, so I only base my knowledge on that. 

When the landlord is forced to pay the water bill it goes on the tenant's ledger as sewer income and reflects as such in the owner's cash flow. It is illegal in most states to treat it as rent and charge a late fee. 

As others said, check your local state statutes to see what your options are.

Buildium offers various premium services. For $99 set up, you can have tenants pay rents via EFT or credit card. You can pass these fees along to the tenant each time they use the service.

Another feature is e-leasing. This is electronic signature of lease documents. The cost is $5 per lease executed in this fashion 

Basic tenant screeningcomes with membership and is $15, its worth the money. Its very in depth. In Wisconsin and Illinois i can pass that fee on to the tenant. For another set up fee (I forget how much) you can sign up for premium tenant screening which is immediate report availability rather waiting for tenant confirmations. The per time fee increases again with that but I pass that on to the tenant.

Lastly, there is some feature regarding maintenance inspections and importing them into Buildium. I haven't used nor looked into it but I do know it comes at a fee.

Contact me if you have any more questions. 

Welcome Tina! I don't have much new advice I can give since many people have made valuable contributions so far. 

I have reading up on wholesaling a lot since that is the aspect I want to get into as well. Being a property manager I learn of investments going on the market before the realtors even do. Be sure to do your due diligence with wholesaling. If you don't have a real estate attorney you trust, find one. Have them look over your contracts and agreements before using them. Since wholesaling can be a grey area, the attorney can assist in making your dealings...less murky.

Good luck!

One of the best pieces of advice I got in rentals was to make sure your car is either equal to theirs or less expensive if possible. If you pull in your newer Maseratri, Mercedes, Audi, etc; tenants begin to assume and create prejudices about you. That you don't need their rent money, they believe you automatically think that you are better than them, etc. Which  can create communication issues. 

For my slightly less affluent rentals and management I have a 2001 Cavalier. For the others I have my daily driver, a 2016 Civic. 

Buildium is $1 per unit and over 200 units I believe a discount starts. I have been with Buildium for nearly two years. My previous program had been Yardi Systems (really expensive for any versions). I found Buildium much more intuitive and easy to use. I've never had connectivity issues that were the result of Buildium. Support is easy to get via messaging or phone. Support is completely free unlike Yardi where you have so much support included and need to buy additional packages. I chose Buildium over appfolio because of the price difference. I also preferred the interface of Buildium.

The negatives of Buildium is that the prSupoort wasn't designed for high level accountants. Don't get me wrong its great for basic business bookkeeping. But that's strictly what it is, bookkeeping rather accounting software. I find Buildium to be really good at updating and adding new features but all of them have come with an added fee. Some can be directly passed onto the tenant, others not. 

You can do a two week free trial of Buildium and check it out. I will say that they aren't aggressive with sales so you won't  have to worry about annoying phone calls if you choose not to go with them. (Nearly 2 years later and Yardi is still emailing and calling me!)

Thank you everyone for the warm welcome! I have been very impressed with how welcoming the members have been.