All Forum Posts by: Roy N.

Albert Tsang:

Our student rentals are always full, but the turnover is higher than other properties, though we are working to bring that down, but it's part and parcel of student rentals - they are only going to be around for 1-4 years.

We are not so concerned with CAP rates as we are with CoC - but we expect our student properties to produce a CoC >12 (once a property is stabilized, this number is typically surpassed).

Tarun Kapoor:

Our lease *very* clearly outlines the Tenant is responsible for all plumbing service calls unless the cause of the problem is found to be an infrastructure issue rather than a user issue. We have a specific list of trades we use (a call list is velcro'd to the inside of a kitchen cabinet in each unit) and they all know the policy on who pays for which types of service calls.

We have undermount sinks in our "young professionals" building, but our student units get have the classic double stainless (7" depth). We do not install garbage disposals - the City discourages them {they may even be banned now} ... they are also a bad idea in student housing as they do not mix well with youth and curiosity.

We have not noticed any greater rate of incidents with the under-mounts.

Personally, I prefer the the over-mount sink and that's what I've put in my own house.

Min Lai

Check with the tenancy laws in your area to ensure you are allowed to collect advanced rent.

Here you are not allowed to request advanced payment of rent beyond the current period. Technically, in your situation, the prospective tenant is offering the advanced rent, you are not requiring it.

Steve Might:

I think we touched on this in another thread recently?

We treat all pets as exceptions to a default position of "no pets" and deal with each case individually. In certain properties we are more likely to accept a pet than others.

When we do accept a pet, we do not charge extra rent for the pet, but we also require the tenant to sign a "pet" addendum to the lease and to carry damage coverage for their pet as a rider on their tenant's insurance.

Greg P.

A house across the street and two down from my residence was the site of a murder-suicide (domestic violence). The house sat empty for two to three years until the adult children were ready to deal with it.

The house was then flipped and the young couple who bought it have been there almost 20-years now ... they new the history of the house when they bought it.

Depending on the size (population) of your area, you may need to carry the property a little while before it will sell {smaller the town/village, greater the chance the purchaser (if local) may have a connection with the victim}.

P NW,

Go to your local flooring shop and ask to look at their commercial grade vinyl flooring (plank, tile, sheet).

I have used commercial grade vinyl in several instances. Many times at a lower price than the residential equivalent ... this is because the "ends" from a commercial installation are often large enough to cover a room in an apartment.

Steve Might

We have a brush - like a small chimney sweep, but flexible - for the downspouts.

However, we also put leaf guards, gutter guards, {pick your favourite name} on all our eaves troughs ... this has eliminate many dam(n)ing issues.

http://www.google.ca/search?q=gutter+guard&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=1eiXUaiaOabF0AGIzoGoDw&sqi=2&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=1010&bih=720

Kelly Williams:

Bill Gulley & Steve Babiak provide you good advise.

First use your free cash flow to establish a suitable reserve for your property(ies): that way if you have an extended vacancy in a unit, or the HVAC needs replaced in another, you have the funds to see you through.

Once you have sufficient reserves, then it all comes down to cost of money / opportunity costs.

Current conventional mortgage rates are very low (2.9% on three of our properties, 5.00% on our commercial mortgage), which, as several folks have pointed out, means accelerated pay-down of those debts may not be the best use of your free cashflow. However, if you have private financing (vendor carry-back, private mortgagee) at a loftier rate, say 8%, then using your cash-flow to accelerate the pay-down of this debt would likely be a good use of your money.

In our case, our default use for surplus cash-flow is to pay-down debt (most expensive first). We have also setup the conventional mortgages on our properties paired with an LoC, which allows us to pull capital back out without refinancing. In practice, this means we dump {most} surplus cash flow onto our mortgages and, when we find another property to purchase, we draw those funds back out via the LoC component.

Jeff S

I missed the dates on the earlier posts in the thread. The Canadian market was not much different 18 months ago. Tightening of mortgage qualification conditions {to what they were prior to being loosened} has slowed down the silliness in some markets, but a solid retrenching is still overdue.