All Forum Posts by: Michael Laniak

My hard lesson from experience and advice going forward is to befriend a smaller mom/pop pest control company and have them come out to the rental property every 3-6 months  depending on the pricing breaks if you have multiple properties (treat inside & outside + rat bait stations).  I also have this person/company inspect and treat my house + my parents house so he gives me a superb discount plus we are on great rapport.  Long story short, now he is my eyes on the property so I rarely have to go out to my rentals for inspection as he walks and treats the interiors and gives me an update on how things are looking inside, how clean the tenants are, how many people are inside, etc.   This also keeps the tenants on their feet. 

Before this process, I used to leave tenants alone and sure enough I would get costly bug/roach infestation problems which was not worth the stress.  Just my 0.02.  Best of luck  :-)

Yes this eats into your profits and costs money, but this will free up your time and headaches and help you become a little more hands off instead of paying a property manager route 6-10% per month.

Correct @Sandy Sawyer .  I am a landlord/owner of a few rentals and cannot technically manage them through the brokerage I am under as they don't allow it b/c of the insurance risks. 
Although, I can manage my own properties through my own property management company, but I cannot manage other 3rd party/client properties under my property management company.

Like @Jacob StoneI am also looking at getting my broker's license to potentially manage other peoples properties to try and generate more income but am still on the fence.

I did get E&O insurance quotes to operate as a PM and they started at $1,200/yr.... So factor that yearly cost into the equation as well.....

Lol. I hear ya.  I finally got through all my student debts (MBA & MS Finance).  Wish I woulda invested that money into SF rentals and apartments.  :-(    Especially since 7-10 years ago real estate investing woulda been perfect timing....  You live and you learn....

Good advice Samantha.  We concluded that it was best to credit our tenant for the nails left over from the contractor and then notified our contractor about it for future vendor credit for the damages incurred.  FYI:  Tenant was wise enough to provide pictures of nails in tire and receipt for each plug/nail $10/per.

Thank you for sharing your insight and experience Heather. I spoke with my local agent mentor and REI mentor and they said that 2 per bedroom I can limit. So I am looking at 8 persons total which is more than I like/prefer.

Help. Is there a maximum of resident/tenants that can inhabit a home? I have a 4 bedroom & 2 bath home I am relisting and am thinking it over again on my resident selection criteria form. I am almost wanting to have a max of 5 (2 adults & 3 kids)?  Is there a law that says you have to allow 2 persons per bedroom or something like that?

Thank you so much Fred & Greg for the reassurance and foresight.  :-)  

Thank you much Andrew.  I am in Texas and there isn't anything freely available.  I guess I would have to work with a RE attorney on drafting such addendum.  But I will definitely start trying to put together a fee sheet.  Does BP have anything regarding a residential fee sheet template to adjust or you just threw together numbers/figures from experience?

I know the apartment industry does this and forgot about it but the cost of repairing apartment items are usually much less than for SF residential so maybe I will take an apartment cost sheet and adjust for SF pricing.  Good tip!

Hello everyone!  This may be my first post.  :-)

I recently heard advice from a very experienced landlord/investor/agent in which he includes a "Credit collection agency" addendum with all his leases now which he believes help keep his tenants on track better.  I am also a Texas RE agent and have looked everywhere for some sort of template, etc but am not sure if yall have any leads with coming up with such a letter that the tenant can initial/acknowledge that they any failure to pay dues, damages, etc.... blah blah that I will send their report their offense and send their info over to credit collections agency X, Y or Z to track, follow, etc...   Any leads or help appreciated.  :-)