All Forum Posts by: J. Brian Walters

I recently picked up my first property in Camden. Looking to add some more to my portfolio

In New Jersey it states that you can collect a pet deposit as long as the total security deposit does not go over the month and half maximum allowed by law.  I require a month and half security deposit standard for my properties. Now I have a prospective tenant that has two small dogs that wish to rent the apartment.  Since I can't collect an additional security/pet deposit, I was thinking of adding on an additional $25/dog for rent.  

Does that sound feasible?  What have others done in this situation?

Thanks,

-jbw

No, I used the Intuit Payment Network, up until a few months ago when they discontinued the service and forced you to subscribe to their Quickbooks program to be able to continue receiving payments from tenants.

I'm currently using the Chase QuickPay service which is free and works fine for what I need which is just to receive the monthly rent payments.

@George P

How has it worked out using Chase QuickPay?  And do you have to have a business account to receive payments using the Chase QuickPay service or will a regular checking account work?  I already have a Chase Credit Card and I see an option to open up a regular checking account online but not a business account.  

I ended up only picking up one of the units. One of them had a few leaks that I didn't want to make my problem.  Closed on it in late Sept.    Fixed a few items and rented it out for $650 at the beginning of February.

Looking for my next opportunity now.

I'm new to this. Recently purchased my first property and used mysmartmove site for the tenant screening process based on the discussions on the forums.. That worked fine. 

It seems that mysmartmove now also has a rent payment feature now called RentPaymentNow.    Has anyone ever used this service?  And would you recommend it?

Thanks,

Brian

I looked into this further and it is part of the NJ Landlord Registration Act where you have to have a contact to accept notices, etc in the county where the property resides. I'm assuming your lawyer handles this for you or you have an address in the same county as the property.

If you aren't properly registered, your tenant can use that as a defense if you want to evict.

I will check with a lawyer on the minimum requirements. Maybe a PO Box will suffice.

For all NJ Landlords, I recently bought my first property and should have it rented shortly. I'm reading through the NOLO information for NJ Rental Laws and one of the things it states is that if you do not live in the same county as the rental property you must provide a contact info/address of a person in that county authorized to accept notices, etc from the tenant. Below is the text from N.J.A.C. 5:29 (2013)

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If the address of any record owner is not located in the county in which the dwelling is located, the name and address of a person who resides in the county and is authorized to accept notices from a tenant, to issue receipts for those notices and to accept service of process on behalf of the out-of-county record owner(s) are as follows:

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I just live in the next county over and only around 35 minutes from the property.    For those NJ landlords, do you appoint someone in the same county as the property to meet this regulation or just ignore it. 

Thanks,

-jbw

@Michael Evans   How do you pull a title profile on a property?

@Tom Mole  I interested in these properties in that is a low barrier to entry into the rental market.  I can pay cash and depending on how things go will move forward with bigger and better deals.  On inspecting the units again and speaking to the tenant in the occupied unit I decided to pass on that.  Basically the unit had water leaking in from the unit upstairs and the owner has not been able to resolve the issue with the owner of the other unit.

Currently I'm waiting for a response to my updated offer from the seller.

Hello Everyone,

I trying to get started in the buy and hold rental property arena.  I had what I thought was a good deal until the seller's started changing things.

Basically I made an offer on two properties, being sold as a package for which I was going to pay cash.  The whole deal was for $27k.  One property was empty and the other one had a tenant.  The seller is supposed to have the tenant vacated and cleanup the property to the same condition as the empty unit.  In speaking with my realtor we agreed on a $1000 escrow. 

Now here is where things start to go south. I'm supposed to go and sign the contracts and my realtor calls me up and said that the seller's agent said they want $2000 escrow per property for $4000 total. Now this is on a $27,000 deal. This irks me but I say ok. I get to the Real Estate office and look at the contract. First thing I notice, it states the properties are being sold "as-is" and buyer is responsible for all CO inspection, etc. The MLS listing did not state that the properties were being sold "as-is" and when I first spoke with my agent it was never brought up regarding the properties being sold in an "as-is" condition.

They also did not have both properties lot and block numbers on the contract.  They only had the lot and block number for one of the units.

Needless to say I did not sign it.  When my realtor got in touch with the selling agent, they said they thought they had discussed all of this with my agent but they had talked about it with another agent who was looking to make an offer.

Now they want me to do the Home Inspection first and then if everything is alright then they will go through with signing the contract.  At this point I'm thinking of just walking away from this one.

What do ya'll think?