All Forum Posts by: Michael K Gallagher

All good Advice, I use Zillow and their rental manager.  It certainly has its limitations but for a first time manager its really intuitive and quite easy.  

@JB B. If you are self managing and your agent had experience managing or screening tenants, then if they are willing I’d ask them to teach you a way to screen them. But if you are managing them, I’d suggest you be the one placing them.

If you are having a PM involved they should really be the ones placing and screening the tenant as they will be managing them.

@Miranda Vaughn big congrats it looks amazing! How are thing going so far?

@Nathan G. This is a solid policy. Similar to the one we use

This is a great outlook.  completely by mistake and happenstance my wife and I did just this with our duplex.  We were first time buyers and just happened to end up finding something in a class C area that was just nice enough that with a high quality property it brought it high rents, but with the class C area, came with a somewhat reasonable price tag.  So this method absolutely works well when done with intention.  

@Keegan Lawyer congrats on jumping in and welcome!  You seem to be fine with the small stuff, there is no issue at all in going to a large apartment building with your uncle.  Especially if he is familiar with the commercial space, he sounds like he will be a fantastic resource to scale in that asset class sooner rather than later.  

I totally understand and agree with you.  I will tell you though that in general the interpretation of the inspection report, for the most part is up to you.  You are worried, and rightfully so, that the inspector will "down grade" or "overlook" something in a grey area.  From my experience inspection reports mainly just list factual statements, or possible issues.  Its really up to you to determine how much of an issue it is.  the reports tend to read something like "cracking or splitting is floor joists is possible cause for concern, we recommend the opinion of a licensed structural engineer" or something to that effect.  The inspector more points things out, they aren't really grading anything for the most part.  Again from my experience...do with it what you will.  

@Logan Loughmiller our SOP on my team is to provide 3 inspector options that we, the realtors, recommend. These are usually people we have vetted, and worked with before.

We than always make it clear in writing and in conversations that the client always may go outside that and choose their own inspector.

From there it is up to the client. The only thing that matters to us is if the inspection is done by the day in the contract.

Certainly there is conflict of interest say if the realtor has an ownership stake in that company, but outside of that, at least for me it makes no difference who the inspector is!

If you are concerned about the quality of the inspection you’ll get in working through your realtor I’d suggest asking to talk to a past client that has used that inspector and speaking with them about the experience.

Good luck!

@Gregory Schwartz yes! We’ve seen this here in central Ohio for several years. You can still have them write and send letters, but the letter should be vetted/read over to make sure there is nothing in them that violate fair housing.

When I sold my personal residence back in 2018 my realtor couldn’t show me any of the letters because one letter came with a picture depicting the family, so therefore that letter violated fair housing, and my realtor then could not show us any of the letters because if they showed us the rest and not the one with the picture, that also would violate fair housing.

So you can certainly still use them, but the buyer should be educated on what is and is not permitted and needs to be done carefully and with intent.

Cheers!

@Brett Tvenge yessss! Love it! So great!