All Forum Posts by: Miller McSwain

I wanted to start in college, and I found my biggest hurdle to be lending. IT IS POSSIBLE TO OVERCOME! So talk to an investment friendly lender now and make a plan!
In my case, I didn't have enough income with my part-time college job to qualify for a loan, although I had enough for a down payment and the rents would have supported the house-hack. Bringing in a co-signer, @Ryan Thomson suggested, would have likely worked. I was just 12 months away from graduating, so I decided to wait and then buy on my own.

If you are close to graduation, you can purchase a month or 2 before graduation if you present your offer letter to a good lender. I got a job offer letter in Feb. 2022 and got pre-approved, closed in April 2022, and I graduated May 2022. 

If you aren't close to graduation though, perhaps getting a cosigner is your best option. BUT totally start a conversation with a lender who primarily deals with investors, they will give you the best answers!

Stessa's specific language is that the Free Version includes "5 smart receipt scans / month". If you hover over that, it elaborates to say "Reduce manual receipt data entry with up to 5 smart scans per month".

When you scan a reciept in, Stessa can automatically look at the receipt and pull out the cost and payee. So I think it is saying it will only do that for you 5 times per month on the free plan; HOWEVER, you can still upload more than 5 receipts per month. You'll just have to manually type in the payee and cost after uploading.

We are on the free plan, and I've uploaded over 10 reciepts this month. I've just had to manually enter some info for some 👍

I hope this sheds some light!

We are in a military town and are renting by the room, so young/single service members are great prospects for us!

First, we rented a room to an officer and he was a great tenant. In fact, after renting to him, we added decided to do a less vigorous screen on military members to save us time BECAUSE they recieve Basic Housing Allowance (so they have a high likelyhood of paying rent). Also, I've heard that if they miss a payment, a quick chat with their commanding officer will take care of everything 😂

HOWEVER, we rented to another military guy, without doing a rigorous screen, and things haven't gone as well. He has paid, but he is sometimes loud and night and is messy in shared areas. This guy is enlisted, not an officer, so we will probably switch back to our regular screening for enlisted members, but we may continue to be a bit lighter on the screen with officers.

I hadn't heard of schedulemyrent.com. I took a quick peak at their website and it looks like they may not be as developed as the other softwares that are often talked about.

There are lots of well-known property management softwares. I'm a single-family investor, and I recently looked through the most popular softwares and selected one. The products I investigated were:

1. Tenant Cloud
2. Apartments.com
3. Innago
4. Avail
5. RentRedi

I was looking for a software that met the following criteria:
1. Online payments from tenants
2. Automatic late fees
3. Maintenance request portal
4. Free for the landlord
5. Online applications
6. Tenant screening (background checks, etc)
7. Lease signing
8. Ability to post vacancies in the software

I found that Innago was the only one to meet all these requirements. It does charge a $2 fee for each rent payment, but that is charged to the tenant by default. I haven't had any complaints from tenants about this charge.

The other softwares were pretty good, but here are the deal breakers for each.
Tenant Cloud: Tenants cannot setup autopay unless we have the paid version
Apartments.com: You cannot upload your own lease, you can only make modifications to their lease
Avail: You cannot upload your own lease, you can only make modifications to their lease
RentRedi: No free version AT THE TIME

***I investigated these softwares 8-12 months ago, so some things could have changed. For example, RentRedi is free now if you are a BP Pro member that could potentially make it a contender with Innago for my use. I did try it out recently, and the only thing holding me back is their lease signing feature. It doesn't prefill any of the lease for you. With Innago, for example, I uploaded my lease and indicated where my name, the tenant's name, checkboxes, etc need to be automatically filled. RentRedi doesn't prefill anything, which is a timesuck and a killer for me :(

I'm rent-by-room investing, and I'd definately recommend publishing your listing to many places to increase your exposure to potential tenants.

We have had success posting to:
- FB Marketplace
- FB Groups
- Zillow
- Roomies.com
- Roomiapp.com
- Roomster.com (paid)

"There are lots of property management softwares. I'm a single-family investor, and I recently looked through the most popular softwares and selected one. The products I investigated were:

1. Tenant Cloud

2. Apartments.com

3. Innago

4. Avail

5. RentRedi

I was looking for a software that met the following criteria:

1. Online payments from tenants

2. Automatic late fees

3. Maintenance request portal

4. Free for the landlord

5. Online applications

6. Tenant screening (background checks, etc)

7. Lease signing

8. Ability to post vacancies in the software

I found that Innago was the only one to meet all these requirements. It does charge a $2 fee for each rent payment, but that is charged to the tenant by default. I haven't had any complaints from tenants about this charge.

The other softwares were pretty good, but here are the deal breakers for each.

Tenant Cloud: Tenants cannot setup autopay unless we have the paid version

Apartments.com: You cannot upload your own lease, you can only make modifications to their lease

Avail: You cannot upload your own lease, you can only make modifications to their lease

RentRedi: No free version AT THE TIME

***I investigated these softwares 8-12 months ago, so some things could have changed. For example, RentRedi is free now if you are a BP Pro member that could potentially make it a contender with Innago for my use. I did try it out recently, and the only thing holding me back is their lease signing feature. It doesn't prefill any of the lease for you. With Innago, for example, I uploaded my lease and indicated where my name, the tenant's name, checkboxes, etc need to be automatically filled. RentRedi doesn't prefill anything, which is a timesuck and a killer for me :("

Quote from @Matthew Perez:

Quote from @Miller McSwain:

I personally wouldn't want to bank somewhere just because they have expense tracking features. The bank's job is just to facilitate the flow of money (in and out). I like the flexibility of being able to choose the bank that offers the best interest rates or, like @Bill B. said, can offer the best relationships.

So I'd encourage you to just search for a good bank, THEN you can get a rental expense tracking software that will help you manage your expenses.

We have our bank accounts liked to STESSA. This web app will retrieve you credit card, bank, etc expenses. Then it allows you to categorize them (as repairs, capital ex, etc) and attach receipts. This info can be used to generate reports for your CPA or generate reports that help you track your property's performance!

 Thank you! Do you recommend Stessa over Landlord Studio? Also, looking into these, it seems like they are catered to long term rentals. Do any of them work well with short/mid term rentals? 

Oh good question. I compared some Long Term softwares and chose Stessa. I haven't looked into Landlord Studio or any STR/MTR softwares unfortunately.

I personally wouldn't want to bank somewhere just because they have expense tracking features. The bank's job is just to facilitate the flow of money (in and out). I like the flexibility of being able to choose the bank that offers the best interest rates or, like @Bill B. said, can offer the best relationships.

So I'd encourage you to just search for a good bank, THEN you can get a rental expense tracking software that will help you manage your expenses.

We have our bank accounts liked to STESSA. This web app will retrieve you credit card, bank, etc expenses. Then it allows you to categorize them (as repairs, capital ex, etc) and attach receipts. This info can be used to generate reports for your CPA or generate reports that help you track your property's performance!

Quote from @Levi Dobson:

@Miller McSwain

Wow, this is great! Just to clarify, as long as you have a signed lease, your lender will allow you to use that income to assist in DTI? Even if you haven't received a rent check?

Good question! I think my lender said that the lease start date just has to be by closing date. So we are getting a lease for the unit we live in now, and he said it would count if the start date is the same date or before the closing date. You may have to check around with lenders though to find one this flexible!

Quote from @Blake Novotney:

Quote from @Miller McSwain:

I'm also a Social Media noob. I understand that consistently posting is very important, so my number 1 priority is building out a pipeline of posts/stories that are ready to publish. This way, as long as I have 10 or so posts in the pipeline, I don't have to rush to prepare a new post on a day where I'm not feeling up to it.

To help with this, I'm using Meta Business Manager (totally free). This lets you post to Instagram and Facebook on a schedule. 

I hope this helps!

 I find myself getting "writer's block" if you could call it that after pumping out a bunch of content. I know most people would probably say something like ask ChatGPT which is great, but do you have any tips for how you brainstorm content ideas? Right now I just write things down as they come to me in my notes. 

 I'm still working on filling my pipeline; however, I'm just focused on documenting what I'm doing. So for example, we are closing on our next house hack and doing some renovations on the current house hack. So I'm just taking pictures and videos of those processes and planning posts around those!