All Forum Posts by: Jason Solley

A great suggestion and easy to use website. Steadily apparently doesn’t like this property either and came back with both high premiums even after bumping it up to a 10% deductible.

I want to give a shout out to Mollie at Cobble Insurance in Moore who has went above and beyond to get me an insurance policy in place and to keep finding to find great coverage at a reasonable rate. 

I ended up going with Safeco because it fits my needs well balancing coverage and costs. Thnaks for the help everyone!

I’m glad to hear there are still markets for older properties, since most rental stock in my area consists of homes that are 30+ years old. Around here, it’s impressive when an HVAC system lasts beyond 20 years — and even more so for a roof, given how hail-prone we are in Central Oklahoma.

From your perspective, is it safe to assume that as long as investors continue purchasing decent C-class or better properties, there will always be insurers willing to provide fair rates? Or do you see a trend where older properties could eventually be phased out in favor of newer build-to-rent homes over the next decade?

On a related note, I’ve typically budgeted insurance costs at about 1% of after-repair value when evaluating purchases. With today’s tighter lending guidelines, do you think it makes sense to increase that ratio, and if so, what benchmarks would you recommend?

I also want to mention that I’ve received some excellent advice recently and was able to connect with a couple of great agents in the area who found me options that brought my numbers back in line with the 1% guideline. One company I came across — SES — seems to fit what I’m looking for, offering straightforward coverage in case of catastrophic loss.

I now own two identical fourplex units side by side in Norman, OK. I have owned the first one for six years and have it insured with State Farm on a DP-3 policy with $476,000 in coverage for $2,515 per year.

I just closed on the second property yesterday, but State Farm informed me that they will no longer insure a fourplex that is more than 30 years old unless I can provide proof that all the electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems have been replaced. Initially, my agent thought she could obtain a variance to get it covered, but State Farm denied this request. However, they are keeping the complex that I originally owned insured.

So far, the only coverage I have found is with Safeco, which offers similar coverage but costs over double, approximately $6,000 per year.

Is what my State Farm agent telling me correct, or is there a mistake on their part? Do you have any suggestions for a more affordable policy? I don't need anything elaborate; just insurance that would protect me in worst-case scenarios like a tornado or fire.

Quote from @Dylan Peters:

We manage a portfolio of rentals across 6 states and are looking for the best way to track accounting, run investment return reports, replace quickbooks. Looking at Stessa, Buildium and Appfolio.

Any advice from anyone?

I'm in two states and have decided to stick with Buildium Essentials for tenant interface, marketing, and leasing. We will continue to depend on QuickBooks for accounting, budgeting, and bill payments. For the money, ~$150/month, we have not seen a better system. Buildium has offered to build a bridge between Buildium and Quickbooks, so that will probably be the next step for us.  

Thanks for the responses. We ended up sticking with the Buildium/Quickbooks duo to handle our tracking and reporting. It works, just not as cleanly as we would like. Buildium does offer the ability to interface with Quickbooks through API and offers custom buildouts. However, I knew this wasn’t something that I was able to pursue at this time. The only thing I can do know is grow the company some more to get the cash flow to fund a better system!

I see a lot of recommendations for Buildium and overall it performs very well. Do you know of anyone using an expense capture app such as Receipt Bank or Expensify with it? Or better yet a Buildium consultant that maybe could streamline my inefficiencies.

Thanks for the recommendations on the apps. Those seem to be the names that keep reoccurring at this level of software.

We have 15 rentals and have been using Buildium for 8 years for tenant communications, collecting rent, and leasing. Quickbooks was our original accounting software but left it to use Tiller with Google Sheets and are outgrowing it and now need trust accounting with better reporting.

Our gripes with Buildium Essentials. We do not like how you enter expenses through the bank feeds. We have a lot of expenses since we buy our properties distressed and put a lot of sweat equity in them. Entering 100 expenses at the end of the month is very time consuming compared to Quickbooks or Tiller spreadsheet, plus you cannot do this through the mobile app. My other gripe is the mobile app. It is so limited and seems like you have to login to the full site for most tasks especially when leasing and trying to get to Tenant Turner to see appointments on our iPhones.

We are considering changing platforms and my current software spend with Tenant Turner is roughly $100/month or $6.67/unit. This is just a baseline and understand the value of good software but do not see us having 50 units in 5 years since we only self-manage. 

If we could choose the ideal software, it would have 90% funcitionality from a mobile app in some limited fashion. Expense tracking is high on the priority list with the ability to capture receipts at the time of purchase with a receipt scanner. We also do not want to loose Tenant Turner (best app ever for leasing). From what we see, we know that it is going to take at least another $100/month but understand it could take more to get what we want so don't limit suggestions due to cost.

If anyone is looking at getting Buildium, it's great software, I just don't think it works well for us. I am more than happy to speak with anyone looking at the software and have recommended it to several people. If you have an office and just do property management, I think it is wonderful software. For someone who does this part time working off your cell phone with a high volume of receipts and partners on some investments, I think there are better option. Stay tuned to this post to see the recommendations.

Thanks, Jason