All Forum Posts by: Laura Williams

@Marc Nischan

Just curious how hard it was to find good tenants in that neighborhood....the rental demand. Did you get it rented right away and was it a quality rental pool? 

@Bryan S.

Just wanted to say thank you so much and awesome tip on getting the lower electric rate. I just called the electric company and there is a lower rate if electric is the primary source of heat and no gas.

@Robert S. I was lucky in that the HVAC guy is friends with the maintenance guy at my PM so it was $75 to check the HVAC. They seem to think that the one burner not working was a big deal cause the furnace was running constantly & never cutting off. They  also found some duct work that wasn't attached and blowing hot air in the basement that they reattached.  Guess I'll see on the next bill. 

I did find out that because it's a 5 plex I can not put a gas furnace in there as it's against code...I would have to add furnaces to all the other units (the other 4 have baseboard heat) as a 5 plex they are suppose to each have their own furnaces is the code supposedly..what they tell me?  I could probably still get someone on the down low to replace that electric one with gas if the bill is still crazy next month. But lesson learned is that I will NEVER buy a place that has electric heat again unless the house/apartment is really small. I knew electric heat was more expensive than gas but I didn't know how much more until now.

@Alex D. you would want to look at commercial loans and the qualifications of those loans vary depending on the bank. I'm doing a commercial loan right now 75% LVT and this bank didn't even want to see my tax returns. Only thing is the rate is higher than traditional for commercial loans. I got 6.2% with 2 points for 30 year fixed. Some commercial loans are ARMS or balloon payments etc. A traditional Fannie or Freddie would be about 1 percentage less but they also want a financial proctology exam.

@James Piercy If it was myself I would arrange the handyman or maintenance workers at a time when the tenant will be home to let them in. I let my PM's handymen/trades fix stuff in tenant's homes unsupervised ....cause my PM has insurance on them but anyone I hire directly I'm always there with them. Has nothing to do with trusting the workers ...just liability issues. I've seen too many bat crazies  and what are you going to do when the tenant says your handyman stole their diamond necklace off the nightstand or someone takes a rock and cracks open the lockbox and breaks into their house and the tenant holds you liable. I had an issue with a tenant at a duplex where I was rehabbing one half of it while the downstairs tenant was still living there. They accused the contractors of stealing their bike they said was worth 1K. I'm sure they didn't steal it and I know it wasn't worth 1K cause it was a piece of crap but you get the idea. 

If you really need a way for someone to get in for emergencies if your tenant isn't home I would do one of those combo locks on the front door where you can get in either using a key or a code. Some electronic locks will give out codes that are only good for one use

I want to thank everyone for all their feedback. This thread has taught me so much about energy conservation and so many great info and ideas. I had an HVAC guy come out today to look at the furnace and one of the 2 heaters on it wasn't working which he fixed. He thinks it will make a big difference on the bill as he said it had just been running constantly cause it only had one heater working on it. Apparently that is common thing to happen on an electric furnace which I just learned. I'm still going to take the suggestions on here to seal everything and the windows, doors and basement insulation and see what happens on the next bill...fingers crossed. 

@Shawn M. from talking to the electric company it appears  the bills drastically drop in the summer ....which would make me think they aren’t paying for upstairs. I’m thinking something with the heating or HVAC is probably the makority of the problem. The electric company told me the highest past bill there was $630 which is just insane for a 2 bedroom apartment and higher than what the whole apartment rents for. 

@Nelson Miranda I’m not familiar with this area but it doesn’t look like a terrible deal for sure. Condos are low maintenance & easy rentals but you can have issues with boards and assessments & subletting rules. My friend is getting assessed 20k on one right now that he paid 90k for. He’ll be ok cause he bought it about 20-30% below market. But something to remember about HOAs. If I was going to buy a condo I would only buy if there’s equity in the deal otherwise for market prices a house will give you a lot more control and you can rent it out indefinitely. With condos if the threshold of renters to owners gets too high they can shut down people being able to rent and they often do because they loose the ability for new buyers to get loans in the building if too many renters to owners. 

@Vandale Gentry I have a couple friends who got homeowner loans with only 5% down. Is this a house you could live in for a year as your primary before turning it into a rental? 

@Jenny Gremillion I use tenant cloud which is a free site for all my accounting. It’s made especially for real estate and I find it very easy to use. I enter all my income and expenses and then you can track exactly what you made or spent and makes tax time much easier. You can also track things like what kind of paint color you used in each house or flooring etc. You can list properties for rent with one click to 7 or 8 of the biggest sites for free. Have tenants pay rent online and a bunch of other stuff.  If you want to check out here is the site https://www.tenantcloud.com/