All Forum Posts by: Gina Nicolas

Unpaid rent was addressed in court that she owes me but once she was evicted, I have not heard from her. Actually I never thought to hold the PM liable but truly they were so horrible I was so happy not to deal with them anymore

Hello everyone, I have to evict one my tenants that left with 3500 dollars from unpaid rents with an additional of 2000 dollars in attorney fees.  She did not pay rent for 6 months and my PM did not do anything. I Fired the PM and hired a lawyer and evicted her but the damage was already done leaving me with thousands of dollars - unpaid rent. Now my question is, how can collect that money, should I hired a collection agency company or what other means out there to collect money she owes, also I don't want this to influence other tenants make them think that they can get away not paying rents but at the same time I don't want to spend one more dime trying to collect from her and not getting anything.

I think it is very hard to get a good PM. So far I have used three PMs, The first one I am still using but planning on taking over next year, with this PM, every time tenant calls for an issue, I get charged 200 dollars dispatch fee for things that can cost me 50 dollars In addition, I don't understanding why do I get charged for things tenants break. My second PM, let one of my tenants stayed in the unit for 4 months without paying rent. I fired them and took over and evicted that tenant within a month. I hired a third PM that wanted to charged me 400 dollars to change 3 keys and got offended when I asked why, actually he fired himself.  I m not saying that using PMs are bad but I have not found one yet that seemed be in my favor. I felt like they are out there to charge me for every little thing, since I enjoy going on vacation and spend time with my family I would like to have a PM in the future or I can hire someone to work for me to take care of the day in and out activities

Thank you all for your input. Can anyone share any systems, software  that they have used to make landlording easier for rent collection, leases, work order etc. I am learning a lot from BiggerPocket community and I do read a lot but very few books are about implementation, they putt emphasis on what you need to do versus on how you should do it

Thank you all

Can anyone share which systems they use to make landlording easier. It will be very helpful for newbies like me, without systems landlording can be a nightmare

Hello everyone,  I am a new investor and i self manage 2 of my properties and one is managed by a property manager. I have not yet had a good experience with property management companies. The one that is currently managing my one property, charge me 200 dollars dispatch fee. Last month, i was short on rent - section 8 tenant, and my property management told me that section 8 was late with payments last month. I am not saying that my property management is lying but i thought that section 8 is never late with payment since it is funded by the government.  This being said, I am learning a lot from the 2 properties that I am  currently managing myself but i do not enjoy it. One reason might be because I do not have systems in place. Tenants are calling me all hours of the day and night. I am currently reading "The book on managing rental properties" by Brandon and Heather Turner and I am learning so much. I will recommend it to anyone new to rental properties management. For the next weeks, i plan to create systems to make my life and landlording easier. I am looking for a good property management in Reading, PA. In the meantime i will continue to manage my properties, but i definitely know that self managing IS NOT for me. 

In this time of uncertainty, the more information that investors can have, the better. I will be looking forward every week for more info and continue to grow as an investor 

Hi everyone, thank you for all you input, but If I want to split shared utilities for my 2 units, what will be the best way to do it? Should I add a flat amount in the rent, rent might go up a lot and create vacancy or should I split the amount monthly and send It to the tenant, how do I split it between a 3 bedroom apartment and an one bedroom apartment? I want to be fair

Thank you all, I think I will be calling a HVAC/plumber company so they can advise me on which options will be best for me.  When it comes to make the tenants pay, since it is a 2 units, I don't think it would be fair to split the bills in two, one unit is a 3 bedroom and the other one is a one bedroom, since I m not sure which tenant uses what or how much that is why I think the best way will be to have 2 separates system so everyone can pay for what they use, but again, I am a new investor, maybe there is a better way to handle the situation but I will be making a few phone call to some HVAC companies

Hello everyone, I have 2 rental properties, 2  units each in PA where I am paying for water, sewer and heat and these bills are eating my cashflow, I am a new investor, one of my rentals, water, sewer and heat added to 600 dollars for this month, one of the reasons might be  that one of my tenant is keeping her windows open all the time claiming that the apartment is too hot and when I lower the heat, she claims she is too cold.  I came to conclusion to make thing better, I will be separating utilities meaning get a new boiler and new water heater for each unit so each tenant can be responsible for their own utilities, it will be costly to get a new boiler and new water heater but I think it will pay off in the long run

Any advice on separating utilities, what type of boiler and how big should it be for each unit? Each house is a 3 bedrooms unit and a one bedroom unit. Does anyone know what the best place to get water heater and boilers?