All Forum Posts by: Kyle Meyers

I haven't had to pay estimated taxes in previous years and so I hadn't really looked at the penalties, but reading these posts makes me think I shouldn't worry about it and just pay the taxes and any penalties in April each year. Is there any downside to doing it this way?

I like your idea, I am thinking along the same lines as you and have an area I am sort of targeting, but I am thinking very long term. Right now, just buying some properties in a working class area (not a war zone by my definition) and in a few years, with enough properties under my control, I may start improving the properties beyond the neighborhood's current standards and screen more strictly to try to bring up the neighborhood value.

I am changing the payment frequency and due dates for a tenant at their request and I am trying to determine if I should use a lease amendment or a new lease. They are currently month to month.

I think the advantage of using a whole new lease is that I have a new standard lease agreement I started using with new tenants, so this tenant would then have the same terms as everyone else going forward. I am not sure if there is a drawback to starting a new lease though, since it seems like that may equate, legally, to them having "moved out" and then move back in.

Any advice would be appreciated. I plan to discuss this with my attorney on Monday.

You can get quicken to manage rent reminders, you just have to delete the one it enters from the tenant screen and add a new one manually from the manage reminders page. As for PM software, I have talked with 5 companies that claim to have the ability to track weekly, bi-weekly, bi-monthly, etc. but none can.

I have been told by a few contractors that drywall will hold up better. Plaster tends to form cracks every few years and will need to be repaired. I have not really experienced this myself yet since I am still new to the rental biz, but if the plaster walls at my properties need continuous repairs, I will look into replacing with drywall over time.

I agree with Chris Calabrese, I have a capital expense projections spreadsheet for each property with all of the expected capital expenses with estimated costs and expected useful lives.

I started keeping track of the "% rule" for my properties. My average to date is 71%. That is based off of the net income compared to market rent starting with the first date the unit was available for rent, so it should come down with time. For the last 9 months it is 44%.

I had a property I lived in and then converted to a rental. The property taxes changed from $170 to $560 every 6 months. Insurance stayed about the same.

Arthur Garcia, I just did a bathroom in Allure, very simple to install, and it looks great. On sale at Home Depot for $1.59/sqft.

I did a rent analysis on a property I had a tax lien on a little over a year ago and just rented the property out last week for 15% over what I figured market rent was last year. It is a small town, so hard to do the market study, but I used CL, rentometer.com, and called a couple places I saw for rent signs in front of.