All Forum Posts by: Johann Jells

All great points, plus would going >4 put you into rent stabilization? I'm pretty sure it would here, but these laws are arcane. I'd talk to a zoning attorney before an architect. Not any attorney, a 'zoning bar' specific one! Lawyers like think they all know everything, but they don't.  

I second the notion that your value will drop. Commercial is appraised by income, not comps. Around here multis often appraise much lower than 3 or 4 units. You would totally have to refi in any case, but you'd lose money and have to put in a lot more equity to get a loan, especially if you put in less than 20% to begin with.

Auto synching with Quicken broke for me long ago. Now I just download files and import them. But I'm not doing it daily!  I'd have migrated to something else if there were anything else other than expensive QB that allowed me to import my decades of old data. 

Sure, but I believe it's foolish to lose a $1700 month's rent to get an extra $50 or $100 a month. However I see your philosophy at work in some of the large towers here where they'll give 2 or 3 free months rather than lower the rent, to keep their rent numbers high for the banks. Not to mention all the extra time I spend contacting leads and showing the unit if it doesn't rent fast.  My typical tenant only stays 2-4 years, so an extra month or 2 of vacancy per tenancy starts to add up.

I've heard again and again the only difference between the 6 year and 12 year is the warranty. The extra money is for "insurance", the unit is the same. And they don't cover labor.

I don't have a problem with used except for fridges. Never again! They're just too heavy, too expensive to repair when they go bad, and harder to DIY than something simple like a range or dryer. Its worth buying new just to get Lowes to schlep it up to the 4th floor and take away the old one!

They're a dying breed, only one left in my county! It's 25 min in any traffic vs 5 min to the HD. Makes it a no brainer. When there were more around I'd go to them, but now it's rare. HD, Amazon, Supplyhouse.com or random internet.

I've gotten a fair amount of stuff from https://discounthomefurnishing... including lav faucets, cabinet pulls and towel bars. Similar quality to home centers but cheaper. I think all the cheap faucets come from one Chinese factory. I recently replaced the cartridge in a Costco Water Ridge branded lav with one from HD marked for one of their Glacier Bay brands.  I've had 3 kitchen faucets from Costco have their swing seize up recently, even though they have lifetime warranty it's a PITA to go through that. Been replacing with cheap Amazon stuff that looks luxury for ~$60. Parlos brand seems pretty nice, but I don't have a long term on it yet.

Sinks from the home centers, depends on what they have. Lowes stopped carrying my favorite porcelain bow front "Euro" lav. For toilets, don't overpay for premium brands! One of the best is also one of the cheapest: American Standard Cadet 3. Standard easy to service design but with a 3" flapper rather than old school 2". I have these in my home as well as rentals, never ever needs a 2nd flush.

Wow, you're brave with a 525! We usually ask for 650, But took a low 500s this week with a really good 6 year job. Unusual times, but he also passed a "sniff test": did my nose tell me he wasn't full of sh*t. This is why I like to show my units personally.

Zillow is getting like 5x the leads of what I get from FB marketplace and Zumper combined, and CL is nearly dead. I tried Apartments.com and found the design infuriating. Zumper doesn't tell you when the inquiry came in! I hater paying them, but Zillow's page is most user friendly, especially when applicants actually answer the profile questions. I love being able to hit the "call" button on the PC and having it pop up on my phone so I can leave a text when they inevitably don't answer.

Thanks all.  FWIW in an apartment not house market with wide diversity in size and amenities even if it's all 2br 1b, it's often pretty hard to figure out exactly where market is other than trial and error. In normal times, if I get more than a dozen hits the 1st day of listing I think I'm at market or below. But this time, I've had 50 hits since 9/15 on Zillow alone, but most the hits were very low quality. I had several applications that later found better places till I rented it yesterday.

Of course it's possible my ad was "too good" and the reality didn't hold up!  I got a new Moto G8 phone with a superwide lens and the pics of the well decorated occupied looked fabulous.