All Forum Posts by: Jeff Blanchard

Wow, 4-5 days; that's a lot. Next business day w/ Venmo. No fees either (unless payer uses credit card, in which case they pay the fee).

Biggerpockets website is thrashing my CPU lately. May need to look into what scripts are using up memory/processes.

Yes, I use Venmo for all my new tenants, although I do have some older tenants that brought their own (Capitol One P2P, Chase QuickPay, etc).

I like Venmo though because it's the fastest, and I can use their API to post the transactions to my rent-tracking app (less data entry).

Venmo or direct deposit.

Small kitchens are something I certainly avoid. The use of kitchens these days, as you probably know, is for far more than just food prep (and a small kitchen complicates this as well).

Whenever possible I've removed walls to combine the living room and kitchen into one large area. This has been well-received by tenants for practicality as well as making the living space larger.

Taking out a wall isn't that hard, unless pipes are involved. Even then it could be worth the investment.

I employ a handyman and have a small network of tradepersons. Also try to rent to self-sufficient and "hands on" tenants. This keeps calls to a minimum.

I only accept rent electronically, so no trips to the bank. I use property management software to keep everything straight.

That leaves turnover. I keep my rents relatively low and have a lot of long-term tenants. Because I keep them happy, they often find someone for me before moving out.

So, no property manager. But I am interested to know the threshold (# of tenants) where others find this necessary.

Google Sheets

Most of my tenants don't care about how professional something looks; they want ease of use. Almost almost all of my tenants are under 35, and they have FB accounts.

To that point, the only tenant of mine who opted out of using Venmo is 45 years old; he instead walks 2 blocks to the bank and makes a teller deposit.

Hm, I try not to rent to people who would pull this kind of action.

If a transaction was disputed, fine: rent balance goes back on the account. You now owe rent in some other format (and I don't accept cash or check). By law (in KY) you now have 7 days to pay, then I can evict.

I haven't seen that before. A few months ago the website was borderline non-responsive for a several hours, but that's the worst I've seen.

They are pretty adamant that this is a person-to-person service, so for an owner-operator it makes sense; for a PM company it does not.

Behind the scenes yes, there are two ACH's taking place; however I've always had my deposit the day after I 'cash out' (which is usually within an hour of getting a notifier I've been paid).