All Forum Posts by: Jon Reed

I don't think having multiple LLCs is beneficial given the complication you have to deal with every year in accounting and organizing taxes. Most people are worried that someone is going to sue them and take everything... If you are not a slumlord and run an ethical business then that is an extremely minimal risk.

1 LLC for each lane of business you are in.

Echo what @Casey Christensen said just to drive home the point.

With so many people involved you would be ten shades of crazy to not get an LLC created and some solid articles of organization defined to figure out how you will handle all the different situations that WILL occur when one of the five you gets mad, feels like they are working harder than the rest, has covered more expenses than someone else, or one of a million different issues.

Before you all even buy your first property you all need to talk about the worse case scenario and agree how you want to handle it. Talking about it now when you are all stoked and friendly will be SOOoooo much easier than when you all hate each other.

@Shawn Burns For us, the BEST way was to create a business checking account and having all of my tenants pay at any of the bank's branch locations with a deposit slip. This way the tenant (or yourself) will not have to pay any processing fees and your tenants can pay in cash if they like since the bank will give them a receipt of deposit.

You then just have to transfer the monthly rents into a different account so the 'Rent Payment' account always has a $0.00 balance since your current/past tenants will know your bank account number.

I can already see the next question though... How do you keep track of who has paid? Well, I make sure each property has a different rent rate. For some it is just a $1.00 difference in order know who has paid based on how much they deposited. 

Only way to grantee no cat smells... Don't allow cats.

No matter how much you spend to 'smell proof' your unit there will always have some kind of stink either from their cooking style or their pets when they move out.

@Farrukh Amini I would start with just calling each of them and asking to speak to their HR department. It will take a few calls and bouncing around before you finally end up talking to the right person.

It also helps to have some promotional material you can email them with photos, prices, and a list of services.

I used to run an apartment complex where we had a dozen corporate furnished units that could be leased by the week or month. Our units had everything from towels, furniture, cooking utensil to plates, cups, and toilet paper for each unit. We also offered weekly cleaning service and paid for all utilities + high speed internet. 

It is a cash cow when you get them going but it took some work to network with local business and gain their trust and convince them to use our complex for their short term executive visits or for their new executive hires. I would start networking now with your local business... get to know who in HR books their travel or if they have their own travel department. You can also publish them online on the various executive rental sites but nothing work better for us then getting our name out there directly to the people in the business who made the bookings/decisions.

@Max Maysonet I would say having a pickup truck is extremely low on the 'things needed' to be a property manager. It may be worth it if you have dozens of property and you do a lot of maintenance, appliance replacement, and landscape work on them yourself. 

However... you are looking at sinking at least $15-25K into a used truck. That is enough money to fund a new deal. 

My suggestion.. don't buy a truck. Take that money you were going to use to buy a truck and invest it in real estate and WHEN you need a truck just go to Lowes, HomeDepot, or UHaul and just rent one for the day for $10-20 bucks.

If i needs up to 10-30K more in rehab than the property is worth then you need to keep on walking past this deal.

Maybe if bought it for just the cost of the land... then demo'd the burned out half and just renovated the minor damaged side then you might be able to make it work. But then you get into some weird structural changes maybe that would need an engineer's input on.

Yeah.. I talked myself out of it. Pass on this burned out duplex.

@Asia Jones Do you have a signed lease between the PM, yourself, and the tenant? 

If so, and they have the lease until 5/19/2020 then they have all legal right to stay in that property until then or unless you both agree on a different date.

Your only other chance is if the lease has some clause which can be used to terminate the lease.

Everything.

Everything is a challenge when you start out. It isn't until you find out what you are good at and gain experience that anything becomes easier.