All Forum Posts by: Nathan Miller

Aside from reading BP as others have suggested, start looking at your local listings on MLS or Zillow so you become familiar with what local prices are and what houses are selling for. You should be able to know within a few moments after looking at a listing if it's a reasonable deal or not.

Oregon did this a couple years back too.  They take away the rights of landlords step-by-step.  The end result here in Oregon is that rents have skyrocketed since the gov started stepping in and telling landlords how to rent and who they can rent to.  It's unfortunately a huge disservice to tenants as a whole.

If you want to see some REALLY crazy legislation being passed, look at what is happening in Portland, OR and Seattle, WA. 

Hi Tyler, It would be common for the owner to pay for the software if you are an employee; however, if you are acting as your own business and being contracted by an owner then it may be more common for you to pay for a software. Either way, if you choose a property management specific application, it should easily save you more time (and money) than it costs you. Also, if you choose a software that has excellent customer support they can help you learn the ropes of managing properties too.

If you need help narrowing down which software to look into, Software Advice offers some great independent customer reviews. It's like Amazon reviews for property management software. http://www.softwareadvice.com/property

Hi @Trung Thai - if you google "property management software reviews" you'll get a lot of resources of recently reviewed products and also discover the leading products.  I find software advice has the best and most current reviews.   I also advise trying out the demos from the companies that offer them, and steer clear of the companies that require you commit to a year before using the software.  A cloud based software company should earn your business every single month by providing you superior service and never require a contract.

Also try calling your top 3 or 4 picks and see how their customer service acts.  It can vary widely based on the company.

Good luck - you are on the right track looking for a property management specific product!

An attorney is going to be a few hundred dollars minimum - I would think about $1200 on average to have an attorney handle a non-cooperative eviction.  You could also look into property managers for hire who do evictions only.  They are generally going to be more economical.  Have you tried giving them a notice to move out yet?  Giving a 30 or 60 day notice might be enough.  You have to give 60 days if they have lived there for more than a year.

Here's a resource for finding property managers in Portland.

https://www.narpm.org/find/property-managers?submi...

Good luck!

The more votes you get the higher your score.  For example, Mindy Jensen is a 9.06 score because she gets 9 votes for every post on average.  Granted, she also works for BP.  :)

I would recommend searching the NARPM list.  There's a ton of NARPM affiliated PMs in the DFW area:

https://www.narpm.org/find/property-managers?submitted=true&toresults=1&resultsperpage=10&a=managers&orderby=&fname=&lname=&company=&chapter=&city=dallas&state=TX&xRadius=&cert=

If you can get $1800/month rent on $150k investment it sounds like a win!   In my experience, investment loans usually require more down though.  But if you can do that, awesome!

I can't speak specifically for VT, but overall I would recommend just upping the rent and including heat in the rent price.  Then you don't become a utility provider/biller.  You do risk them using more heat than normal though if they think it's "free" with rent.  So make it clear that rent will increase with heat if it goes above average.  Or build in a surcharge into the lease if it exceeds X amount.

Another thought...  for that $350/month, would it be cheaper to replace the system with something more efficient?  

Hey Nikki,  I personally used to use Quicken property manager and home & business, but was never able to get it to handle advanced things like this.  Not to mention their program gets worse and worse every year.  This year when Quicken 2016 it stopped syncing with my bank (after their update), and continues to fail to categorize transactions I gave up and just went with Quickbooks Online.  My advice, ditch Quicken.