All Forum Posts by: Jarrod Kohl

I have even had some expensive rot repair as a result (extensive rot). So a tenant may have gotten their lost quarter or detergent but left the landlord with thousands in repair costs.

Tenants in my experience do not properly unhook and reconnect the appliance lines--but just pull, pull, pull, (the harder the better they seem to think)...

A careless tenant could even pull off the water lines on a washer--an emergency disaster (not had that one yet, knock on wood). A frig with a water line (ice maker/water dispenser) could have the same issue (but I use plain jane, no frills).

I even had a couple of departing tenants turned oven pullers that yanked out the socket for the cord......

So my script now is Never move any appliances. Ever. Never. The tenants need not pull these out to clean or for any reason (too much risk)... I will even come and help retrieve something for them (or lend them a grabber) to get behind any appliance. Rather than telling them about how to disconnect lines, pull it out, reconnect (too complicated) I just try and explain the catastrophic gates of hell opening scenario that can happen if they jerk these out from the wall carelessly.

Best of luck!

Tell Tenant in Onboarding--No Moving Appliances (Ever).

Good idea!

We had stellar tenants who took care of their apartment perfectly, but the day before they moved out, they moved the refrigerator to clean beneath it and tore the vinyl floor covering.

We had a tenant whose brother helped him set up a washer and dryer. The guy forgot to tighten the washer water exhaust hose and it fell off, resulting in a whole washer full of water dumping out onto the floor, from the laundry room to the kitchen and even into the dining room carpet. The tenant sopped up the visible water and was not going to tell us what happened, but water ran into an area near the hot water heater and set off one of our water alarms. The tenant couldn't stand the noise of the alarm and called us. Water was under the refrigerator, range and in the hot water heater closet. Even the carpet in the dining room had to be lifted up for proper drying. Can't overemphasize the value of water alarms placed in key locations... near hot water heater, laundry, kitchen sink cabinet...

When tenants move-in or move-out their own appliances, there is a greater chance for damage to floors, walls and woodwork. We provide instructions regarding move-ins and move-outs to mitigate damage to our property. Not only for appliances, but for other big furniture items too.

Tenants not telling you or the managers about water damage is the worst! I also try to get some water sensor when possible and I try to be very clear that tenants should call for these things.

For plumbing, use the "nice" supply lines. We had a new plumber come in and replace a few toilets and had used the cheaper plastic supply lines. One of them of course failed when the tenant was not home, a few thousand dollars later of repairs and we made sure the supply lines were all in good shape...

The other tip is for student rentals we started tiling the entire bathroom and adding a floor drain, we also added urinals to any of the bathrooms that had room for it. Not only can you take a house and wash the whole room down (rarely needed) but people actually love having the urinals, even if it is a house full of girls.

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Reading from your initial post, are you house hacking this?

I think you may be in for a rude awakening if you are trying to house hack a 4-plex with students. Not only will they be your tenants but your neighbors, with shared walls?

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I would also be interested in this as we are kicking up our direct mail efforts and looking to find a good company.

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Is this for an empty unit, or a tenant who has not being paying?

Either is a cause for concern, but the bigger concern to me is a tenant who is not paying rent and a management company who is not doing anything about it. I would talk with the management company, but I would also start looking around for a new one.

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Originally posted by @Brad Pierce:

Thank you again. I hope for your sake things continue to run smoothly. I have a couple feelers out for legal counsel as well as my brother in law is an ADA here in Florida. I will let you know who is recommended to us. One last question, are you self managing your properties or using a management company? If you are using a management company, which company are you using & have you been happy with the service & performance provided by them? I am considering self management but need to get a good Lease together, Which is the main reason I am looking for legal counsel at this time.

Thank you again!

Brad Pierce

If you are mainly looking for an attorney for the lease, you may be better off just getting a listing agent for renting your property. I am not familiar with the market that you are in, but here in Boston a real estate company or getting standard MA leases online are both good options, if you do not want to go to a full management company.

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We had a family condo in Hilton Head and after years of disappointing (but not terrible) results with the rental management company we decided to try Airbnb. It is certainly a different crowd than the renters that come from VRBO and the short terms down there, but we have made a lot more money on the property.

The biggest concern is finding the right turnover crews now, we are on our second cleaning company and started to get complaints about the unit not being cleaned before someone moved in....so may be on our third soon.

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Originally posted by @Brandon Schlichter:

I've got about 20 solid properties that make sense as investments, finding properties has never been the problem for me, the problem has been having funding to buy them.

I've considered the issue with selling properties however from what I see large multi-families are almost exclusively in the realm of hedge funds and out-of-state buyers. Smaller properties sell to locals. While selling 200 at one time wouldn't be possible (And would likely crash the market), they could be sold off a few a month (Granted taking forever to sell. The ALTERNATIVE is that if I make an efficient company, with managers in place I could potentially just package things up and sell them as turnkey investments. If ROI yields are double what one would see as compared to large multi-families, I would THINK they would be quite sell-able and not effect the market as a whole.

You could certainly sell them as a whole (or at least a large chunk) we did this to acquire a large (mostly) student housing portfolio in Ohio.

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So 5 properties, 10 units, and when you say $2,095 in gross profits, do you mean net profits? I just assumed a typo but I was not sure. Any upside or room to increase rent? Either way it looks like a pretty great deal if you are just looking at the numbers.

You should be able to get a commercial loan, if they are packaged as a portfolio. Check with some of your local banks, the smaller regional banks are the best place to start. From there you would move to mortgage brokers or alternate sources.

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If you do not like any of the property management companies in your area, you may be best off just hiring a maintenance/bookkeeper/assistant whatever makes sense.

I would also look into dedicated property management software. Buildium, Appfolio and Rentmanager are all pretty great and aside from the time it will take to set everything up, it would end up saving you some time and hassle.

Most people recommend moving to multifamily, because it makes sense at a certain dollar amount. Every market is different, but the idea is that you only have 2 or 3 roofs a few heating systems and one location to drive to, not 100 different roofs, water heaters, etc. There are also ways to force appreciation into a multifamily building that can increase market value and in theory if you needed to liquidate, it would be way easier to sell a few buildings than to sell 100. Again, not saying that you need to do multifamily but I personally like to have a mix of both.

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There is a valid point that tenants will not water any plants you put in. A hardy hedge/evergreen would be a good choice, we often work with local landscaping companies to do a little landscaping. It does cost you though, but we use the same company for leaf removal and snow removal (for some of our properties) and it works out pretty well.

1 Vote

All Forum Posts by: Jarrod Kohl

Jarrod Kohl has started 8 posts and replied 206 times.

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