All Forum Posts by: Krishna Chava

@Keeya WangJones If you have Ring camera at tenant's door, you should at least give tenants access by adding them as users.

@William Conrad I would be equally concerned about tenant leaving window half open since they aren't paying for heat. Your thermostat control won't solve that issue. If you control the tenant with set point of thermostat, they will care less about being responsible in other ways. Tell them you will need to increase the rent if your bills are high. I have automation setup in my Airbnb units where HVAC turns off if any window or door is open. You can do the same,but it should be seen by tenant as a solution that helps both of you.

Very nice townhome condo package in a fast appreciating area. 13 condos total (part of 52 unit condo complex). All units are investor-owned. Very well run HOA with a monthly fee of $137 that includes property insurance. Large floorplans and rented significantly under market.

I am not the seller, I can across the deal when the seller was installing our company smart home technology (dekk.io/rental-manager) to get a better price on sale. I think it's a great deal and wanted to share with bigger pockets community. All inquiries will be forwarded to the seller and he will contact you.

@Rob Denn You don't need Elite version of Ring. Elite version comes with an ethernet cable but I don't see any advantage of running an ethernet cable to the door if you don't already have one. I suggest Ring Doorbell2.

My automation for AirBnB has:

1) Ring doorbell2.

2) Smart Thermostat.

3) Window and door sensors.

4) Yale Smart lock.

5) Water leak sensors and smart fire alarm.

Once these things are connected by a hub, then you can do automation. If someone has a window or door open for more than 5min, I turn off AC/heat. If no one is checked in, AC goes into standby mode. I have a log of everyone entering and leaving the house from smartlock and doorbell. I also give access to Ring for AirBnB guests for the duration of the stay. They appreciate it as they are in an unknown place.

Krishna.

I will share some of the information in the public forum as well since several people showed interest. For a landlord, smart home tech is not attractive if it's a bunch of devices tenants uses and the landlord has to service them for a small extra rent. That's why we put in smart smoke/CO detectors, water leak sensors, smart thermostats and video doorbells in our units (connected by a hub). Each of these devices sends constant stream data. By curating this data, we can have peace of mind that a property is performing without having to do frequent walkthroughs. We can spend time visiting properties that seems to have flags, not visit all the properties.

Some of this can be done in a DIY fashion for someone inclined to try. Keep in mind that most smart home tech is not made for landlords, so you have to look at the usability of a device before you even look at features.

As everyone pointed out it isn't easy to evict a tenant for smoking, pot or not. The problem here is not smoking but people doing it in a way that is not considerate to others. Eventual solution will be achieved by making the place less desirable for these smokers. It should be a combination of aggressive enforcement (try to evict worst offenders, even if you fail, they know you are serious), non-renewal of leases and working hard to get good quality tenants whenever vacancy happens. This takes time and I see no way around it.

I received sage advice about a related topic from my lawn mowing guy. I was complaining about tenants throwing trash and generally keeping neighborhood dirty. His answer was, once you start taking care of the property, these same people will be much more considerate about throwing trash everywhere. I started spending more on the exterior of the property and I rarely see people throwing trash. 

@Nathan G. Agree with you. I had several water leaks because tenant's washer and dryer are old OR they didn't hookup property. If I can provide washer and dryer and get more rent, I always take that route.

@Harvey Yergin IV It's not a single brand, will share details in PM. 

@Landon Rasmussen Use google voice, but don't use google voice number associated with your personal email account. Create a separate gmail account for property management and use that google voice number. My concern here is not about receiving or blocking frequent calls. There are other ways to manage that issue. If you give google voice number that is associated with personal Gmail to tenants, Google will think you are friends. So will Facebook, Linkedin and many sites that are mining data in the background. Few months from now Linkedin and facebook will be showing you these tenants as suggested contacts and it will be making the same suggestion to your tenants. Quite awkward if you just evicted the tenant and it can even be dangerous as tenants will know much more about you that you would have liked them to know.

It is very important to treat landlording as a business even if you have 1 or 2 properties.

@Hubert H Byron III There are 3 types of smart locks from the landlord perspective. Assume all of them have remote lock/unlock feature.  

Type1: Keypad access w/ physical key backup

 Type2: No keypad access(Bluetooth only) w/ physical key backup 

Type3: Keypad and/or Bluetooth without physical key backup.

I would only use type 1 in my rentals as I don't want the tenant to be dependent on the phone having a charge to open the door. No one carries backup keys once they get used to the alternate way of the opening door.

I need to replace 2 locks per unit, front and back. That would cost at least 300. It might not sound like much but my entire smart home system as it is currently installed (video doorbell, smart thermostat, smart fire alarm, and 2 water leak sensors) is 300.  I get extra rent of 25 for this system. I don't think my tenants will pay much more if I add smart locks to the package and double my cost. They are used to carrying keys anyway as they are all car-dependent commuters.  There is also additional issue of someone watching the code when a door is being opened and they have the keys! Video doorbell mitigates this problem but that adds to amount to automation needed.

I am sure there are places smart-lock makes sense ex: city apartments and STR.