All Forum Posts by: Josh Skyer

Please put me on your buyers list. 

Looking to connect with an Appraiser in the NYC / Long Island area ?  Not sure if there are any here on BP but worth a shot!! 

Hope it turns out well.  

I would 100% have your atty involved every step of the way here.  Your seller, the listing agent, contractor are all working together.  While your buyers agent is good -- its not as good as your atty. 

I focused on STR as close to where I live as possible. The first one was 2 blocks away from my house. For me it was important to learn every aspect of the STR business so we self managed everything and learned the game top to bottom.

We built it up to 4 STR and were cooking with gas until BOOM -- The city we live in changed the laws around STR and Abnb and made rentals under 31 days basically illegal. Because we were doing such a high volume of rentals ( and not making any friends) someone reported us and we got busted and like a drug deal our homes go raided by special "air bnb police" with guns. Our guests were on vacation and thought they were getting arrested. It was pure insanity and cost us big $$ in fines. We did a hard pivot to MTR and don't make as much $$ but are fully booked with a lot less work.

Just be careful and have a pivot plan incase your local municipality changes the laws. 

I am an investor and on the board of a Condo in NYC.  We are having issues with our current management company specifically when it comes to pushing out messages to residents. 

For example:  Managment schedules someone to inspect AC units in apartments but the residents don't know.  OR Managment schedules work to be done and the super of the building Is not informed and chaos breaks out. 

I made a suggestion for management to implement a text messaging system that is linked to a calendar. I own gyms and we use a simple system like this that is SMS text based and it works great.  An appointment is booked , added to a calendar and all parties involved get an automated text message informing them.  

Can any one offer any suggestions that pertain to property management?  Any one use any software with this functionality? 

@Allen Moore I really enjoy section 8 or as we call them in NYC programs.  I have props in Section 8 , vacation rental, cash rentals, and commercial.  I would say that the section 8 experience has been overall the most rewarding on a deeper level.  

Yes, above-market rents and guaranteed payments are super great BUT for me they are second to actually being able to help and make a positive impact for people in need.  It's desperate out there and in my experience, most landlords ( with nicer and higher end units) will not accept programs.  Being able to accept a family in a program into a nice, renovated, and well cared for unit is an incredible feeling.  

Happy to go deeper into any questions you may have.  Holler at me anytime.  Below are some quick tips. 

1. Screen them hard for your safety and for theirs.  Certain families don't fit well in certain units.  

2. Research all the programs in your area.  Section 8 , HASA, Feps, Vash -- There are a lot.  Some good and some not so good. Do your homework.  There are some that even give landlords 4K incentives for accepting. 

3.  Believe it or not, there are many programs for which the tenants do not have a portion to pay.  These are great and I encourage you to try and find these people. I do this not only to guarantee the full amount BUT to protect the relationship with the Tennant over the long ARC.  It's a much cleaner relationship if you can put yourself in a position to be 100% giving as opposed to collecting.  

4.  Be straight forward with tenants.  In my experience, 1 unit goes up and within a week I have 100 applicants.  Sadly I can only pick one family so I try to not give the other 99 any BS.  Some of them are trying to get themselves and their kids out of covid infested homeless shelters -- The last thing I want to do is BS them.  I try not to ghost them and always tell all applicants when someone is selected so they can continue their search.  

Hope it helps. 

Looking for suggestions on a keyless ( code ) lock for air BnB. Getting tired of the old lockbox. 

 Something that won't require constant battery changes and codes can be programmed remotely if possible.  Please include the brand and model number + Pros and cons. 

Thank you in advance.

JS

Thank you all for taking the time to offer help here. It's greatly appreciated. 

Im not positive how this will play out.  It's section 8 and the apartments are really nice.  Marble, stainless steel appliances, really nice kitchen backsplashes, nice hardwood flooring, etc. My hope is that any negatives due to noise might be made up by the positives of sections 8 housing MILES AHEAD of what's currently on the market. 

Thank you all

Thanks Guys, 

Yes I have spoken to the 3rd floor tenants.  They said they try but kids will be kids. They got incredibly offended that the second floor tenant called the landlord and it seemed to make the matter worse.   

I have been through this .  

I learned a couple of valuable lessons. 

1. Never leave it up to the tenants to put trash out on the street and keep trash clean and neat.  If this works for you that great but for the most part it just does not work.  In NYC when tenants mess this up the landlord gets tickets and violations. 

2. Maybe in a single family , but multifamily is a communal mess.  In theory if everyone just manages there won trash things would work out great.  But that NEVER happens.  

3. My opinion is to NEVER hire tenants to manage something like this.  ( or any other work in the building)  I believe the relationship between landlord / Tenant needs to be protected.  Hiring tenants to do work has potential to muddy the water when things do work out according to plan.  A live in super is something a bit different. 

For the trash I would erect some sort of area on site with cans and hire 1 or 2 separate workers to bag it up and bring it out.  I recommend putting bags out this way they don't have to return the next day to bring the cans back in.