All Forum Posts by: John Hagen

We are having some trouble filling our vacancies here in November and it’s not from lack of interest, it’s from lack of money for the deposit. We are getting a lot of questions and showing request from our marketing in which we post the rent. The rent price is not the problem either it’s the deposit. Our vacant apartments are in a blue collar town where 19 and 20 year old are getting factory jobs for $14-$20 an hours, but no one has any savings. 

We have been talking about 2 options and want some input, we have no desire to reinvent the wheel.

1) Charge $100 extra a month for 5 months to get the deposit

2) Charge $60 a month extra on the appartments and put it straight into maintiance account

Any experience with this is welcome as is other ideas.

Please and Thank you

Thank you in advance,

We are using Rentec Direct for our property management and we like it, but payment processing is handled by Forte and we are less happy with them. We are having problems with ACH returned payments, when a payment is declined and returned it’ takes 6 day form them to let us know, and that’s way too long.

Is this a universal problem with all payment processing for ACH or is Forte extra-long?

Any advice or info is welcomed

Two months ago my business partner was driving around and saw a sign for an online auction of a house. We took a look and the bid was very low so we threw out a low bid and ended up winning. 3 days later we were approached and offered 40% more to sell on a lease to own contract. I am having a tough time finding a decent template for a triple net lease to own contract. Does any one out there have anything I can use?

Thanks Linda, I am using Groundfloor and holdfolio now, I like Ground floor, Hold folio seems great but not enough experience yet to really comment.

Thank you for your quick response, your response prompted me to shoot off a question to my CPA/brother he said it would be a wash on taxes assuming we would be taking an equity draw out of the primary company anyway.  

I'm in a 3 way partnership. Our ownership shares are based solely on dollars invested. Two of us are active partners and the 3rd is not 100% silent but mostly silent. We 2 active partners pitched the idea of forming a property management company to handle all our own properties and pull a little income out for the work we do above and beyond the 3rd partner. The 3rd partner agrees with this idea. We feel that a percentage of gross rents is a good quantifier of the work we are putting in.

My question is, do we need a real estate license to form a separate LLC to manage our own properties? If we did not do the LLC we would not but since we are creating a new company I'm not sure of the needs in Illinois.

Yesterday we closed on an old craftsmen style house, we started painting and ripping up carpet and I found painted hardwood floors in good shape. We are happy to save on flooring now we have to sand and stain the floors but have no clue what to do. Would be better off doing it ourselves or hiring it done? If we should do it ourselves any pointers on what to do.

We also have some rooms with plywood on top of hardwood. This poses us two questions, should we assume the flooring is damaged under and leave the plywood? If we take up the plywood what is a good way to take it up without damaging the flooring?

I currently manage 9 units and expect to double if not triple that by the ended of the year. I am looking at software to help. I read all the previous discussion and saw a lot of recommendation. Appfolio caught my eye and was looking for personal testimonial good and bad.

Thank you for your help!

My partners and I are closing on our first deal firday, on Saturday we will be gutting the place. Does anyone have any suggestions on ways to commemorate this first deal, other than a boring picture?

I’m part of a real-estate investment partnership and that is going great, so I want to invest more in real esate. Due to my grandmother's passing I have a bit more cash than my partners and we don’t want to disrupt our balance. I am looking for a good crowd funding site I can put 10K-20K into. The problem I’m running into with sites like Realtyshares is I’m not an accredited investor. Does anyone know of a site I can invest with, with a net worth of less than $1m.