All Forum Posts by: Jim Rivell

@Joe P., @Lauren C. I am just coming across this post and not sure if you are both still in the South NJ/Philly markets. If you are, shoot me a DM. I just moved into a personal property in South NJ, and own 2 rentals now in Delaware County, PA. I'd love to talk shop about our local markets!

Bought my first property in Nov 2022, completed a fairly extensive rehab, closed on my first personal property in March 2023 and just finished another big rehab and closed on my second rental on Wednesday. It's been a busy few months and it would have been possible without my knowledge from BP!

Piggy-backing on the "just jump in mantra" a friend and I wanted to start RE investing and decided to join forces in order to mitigate risk and learn from each other. We started with combing leases, move-in forms, inspection forms etc for months and had them vetted by experienced investors/professionals. We wasted months on things that were ultimately going to be tweaked/changed or gutted once we had actual tenants reading the documents.

Point being, don't wait for things to be "just right" in order to jump in. Time is of the essence, get in there. 

I also bought my first property under my personal name, but then bought my 2nd under my LLC so I have a little experience doing both.

From a liability standpoint there is much more protection/privacy under the LLC, but if this is the goal of having the property under the LLC please be aware there are a lot of ways a good lawyer can “pierce the veil” if something where to ever happen.

From a financing/insurance standpoint, it was much easier for us to do personal names. We got better terms and products that were available to us, more flexibility and we’re able to work with more lenders/insurance agents since we did not need “commercial products” which is what you’d need for the LLC. This was partly due to a small purchase/loan price (roughly $120k) but be aware if you’re going to be purchasing under the LLC these are some issues you might run into.

Ultimately there's many ways to skin a cat and you'll have to decide what's best for you based on your business structure, use of the business, and what you plan to use the LLC for (protection/privacy/for partners etc.).

@Richard F. we have been pre-signing our leases then sending to the tenants. We collect SD, first and last month rent via Rent Redi after the lease has been signed. Since these tenants were signing 1-2 months prior to move-in date. Upon move in we meet with them to walk the property, hand over keys and sign a “move in form”. It’s been hard for us to set “failure to do so consequences” since we didn’t have a large pool or prospective tenants. 

Our current process is to send a lease agreement via Docusign then follow up with adding our tenants to Rent-Redi, but we have noticed some tenants take days/weeks to sign. We assumed Docusign would be the most efficient and friction-less system since it is only a few buttons to sign then Rent-Redi to be our “all-in-one” platform for other land-lording/management tasks.

Has anyone else experienced these issues? What other systems do you utilize to make this process smooth and efficient? How can we improve our current process to get from prospective tenant to current tenant quicker?

Found success with absentee lists and cold calling/texting in our specific market. Next to this I’d agree with many points above.. networking! It works wonders. Getting FaceTime with investors in the area and letting them know you’re looking to wheel and deal they’ll look out for you when something comes up that they can’t buy. 

Depending on the inventory available in your area will likely dictate the best way to find deals. My first property was an off-campus student rental with a large investor presence already established so our best method was to pull an absentee list, skip-trace, then cold call/text to see if anyone was looking to off-load a property. Next best suggestion for this specific kind of market was to get involved in meetups, get FaceTime with these investors and they’ll likely consider you when they’re looking to love on from a property.

might be best taking this to Stessa Support

@Oscar Guzman my LLC has the same dwelling/fire/landlord insurance which covers up to $100k liability, but we decided to also do a Commercial Umbrella for the LLC with a $1M liability coverage. Since there are multiple properties within the LLC we thought this was the best route and it was only roughly $250/year from State Farm. Well worth the risk in our opinion to cover our entire LLC