All Forum Posts by: Nathan Miller

If you can hire an Ohio property manager to handle the local operations that is going to be your best bet.  Remotely managing is extremely difficult and often very costly to say the least.  Ohio has some of the strictest landlord laws in the country and is very pro-tenant anti-landlord.  So either learn all those laws, and keep up with them as they change frequently, or hire a professional.

Regarding the LLC, I'm not aware that Ohio has any requirements for the LLC to be registered in state to own property so it shouldn't matter where the LLC is formed, but I'd advise you to double check with a local property management company and/or attorney to be sure.

@Brendon Bourne

Lots of good advice above, especially waiting to bring it in house until you are ready.  Once you are, I'll add:

Be picky!  Screen all your new tenants very well.  Include criminal, eviction, and credit and make sure they are squeaky clean and have never had issues with prior landlords.  Also go beyond paystubs (as they can easily be faked - google it), and do a real income verification.  All these features are available in modern property management software.

On the software side, start right by using a software platform that is designed for property management.  Don't try to do it with Quickbooks or by hand, you'll waste all your time trying to make those solutions work instead of managing your properties.  For your size, great options  include Rentec Direct, Buildium, and Appfolio.  There's other software solutions too, but for your size they probably aren't worth looking at.

This is all too common and the manufacturers change their styles regularly for exactly this reason.  They know circumstances like this occur and would much rather you replace your entire room's flooring than just a couple replacement tiles.   Best advice, always buy an extra box of tiles when you install them so you have spares.  It's not the tenant's fault there wasn't spares available and they can't be held responsible for replacing the entire floor - but they can be responsible for the damaged areas.  Hopefully you can find a match that is close enough, maybe an online source or local tile installer?

It's better for both you and your tenants to raise it a little each year to accommodate your extra expenses.  By not raising it you are doing both yourself and them a disservice.  If it's already below market rent, you shouldn't lose the tenants and even if you do, it will be very easy to replace them.

When setting your criteria and determining where to order your background reports from note that it's illegal in many states to base a decision on a conviction more than 7 years old.  

Somebody suggested a credit score of 720+ above, which is much higher than most landlords set the bar at from what I see.  Maybe for luxury NYC apartments, but most renters for normal properties fall in the 650-700 range.

Services like Docusign or Hellosign (now Dropbox Sign) are great options.  Although if you are using a property management software for managing your properties a lot of software solutions have electronic lease signing baked right in.

Same with texting, it's not the best idea to give them your cell phone number.  Either get a business line that supports texting or text them from inside your software.  If you can keep all the communication in your software that's best because it's recorded and available if you ever need it, whereas cell phones get lost and wiped routinely.

@Lara Gonzalez

I don't have personal experience with them, but I keep hearing about RelayFi.  Low fees, and they let you split up your funds into different wallet (like sub accounts) from what I'm told.

@Austin Bright

No criminal history

No evictions

Credit score better than a threshold you specify

Also fake paystubs are a thing these days, just google it.  Running an actual income verification report tends to provide a more accurate picture and removes the risk of getting fake stubs.

My advice..  be picky!  One eviction can cost you 2+ years of revenue, so be picky up front and make sure you have the best possible tenant for your rental.

Stessa falls into that category of "charge the tenant/upsell services/paywall" instead of a simple software fee like more mature platforms use.  They have to earn revenue somehow and it's a model that some landlords choose to save some money on the software fee.  There are a lot of newer platforms that have shown up in the past few years that do exactly that.  

If you want a more professional and mature platform look into Rentec Direct, Buildium, Appfolio(?), Propertyware, or Rent Manager.  These platforms typically have billing policies where you pay a per unit fee per month to the software and you get regular updates and support each month.  I put a question mark on Appfolio because they recently just started charging tenants for online payments - but the others do not.

If you do have a property manager, they should be the ones using the software though and then providing you a login to view all your information.  You shouldn't have to be doing any accounting or data entry if you have  PM.  Make sure your PM uses one of the softwares above and you should be in good shape.

@Matthew Morrow 

Most of the applications out there, especially the new startup apps are indeed designed for the landlords who only have a handful of units and most of them pass their fees on to tenants, which doesn't work very well at scale.  I would recommend looking at the more mature apps that have been around for 10+ years and already worked through the needs of the larger managers.  You might also consider what software the company you are acquiring is using.  Changing software is challenging so you want to make the right decision the first time to save yourself a lot of time and headache later.

For a medium size portfolio (< 2,000 units), the apps that have been around for 10+ years include Rentec Direct, Rent Manager, Buildium, Appfolio, Propertyware.

If you are growing into the higher 5 digit mark or just have money to burn, you might also look at Yardi, Realpage, Entrada; however, those platforms are really designed for managers with thousands of units.  I'm not even sure if they pick up the phone for less than 1,000 units. 

The one exception to the newbie software rule might be Rentvine, as I've heard positive things, and if @Brad Larsen is recommending them, that says something. :)

It may boil down to which platform's processes and support works best for you. The best way for you to figure this out is visit the platforms and explore their free trial (if offered). Run through some of the features you will need like setting up a property, moving in a tenant, receiving rent payments, and publishing online applications.

Pay attention to which platform feels the best to you as you perform these functions. Each platform does it a bit different and you are going to like some more than others. While trying it out, call their customer service and see how they treat you and how knowledgeable they are on their product. Ask their customer service to walk you through the above options if needed.

It shouldn't take more than a couple hours of research to try out the top platforms and identify which feels the best for you. Those couple hours of research will save you hundreds of hours of time down the line, so it's well worth the effort.