All Forum Posts by: Neal Collins

Luis Gutierrez Evictions are costly and largely a last line measure. Here’s a few things that we do that could be helpful to you in situations like this: 1. Have a conversation with the tenants about your expectations and directly tell them that they are not meeting them. Many times we just get frustrated but fail to communicate clearly. 2. Increase their rental rate so that it stays just below the 10% line for a calendar year and see if that gets them to move. 3. Give them a No Cause Notice of Termination. Get the necessary documents from an organization like Multifamily Northwest and serve the tenants appropriately. You’ll need to pay relocation expenses which vary according to the number of bedrooms in the unit. 4. Last case scenario is to try and do a For Cause eviction. You will need ample documentation and is procedurally much more difficult because you’ll need to send out Cure or Quit Notices for most of the things that you mentioned. If you make it to court then the judge will also want you to potentially negotiate out an agreement, and if that doesn’t work then you’ll go to trial where the ruling doesn’t always go to the landlord.

We just took over a 15-unit multifamily here in Portland that is in a great part of town. We knew that it was 50% occupied, but some of the vacancies were due to unfinished work on the property. No problem, we’d rather place our own tenants anyway in this kind of situation. The property has been managed by a long entrenched property management company in the city. They are old school and definitely not technology savvy, but their paperwork seemed thorough and organized. Maybe it should have been a warning signal when they handed over a wad of unmarked keys. We kind of shrugged it off because this is par for the course at times and we are going to be replacing locks. It wasn’t until we started contacting tenants and plugging in the info from the leases into our system did we realize how chaotic things really are. Tenants that had left months ago are still showing as current and the apartment had never been turned. Other tenants are supposed to be in one unit but actually lived in other units. The $1,000/month on-site manager doesn’t actually live on site. Only one or two rental rates stated in the paperwork are actually accurate. Leasing was getting run off a bad website and Google Ad words and not through other online sites. This just underscores the importance of organization and clear record keeping in buy and hold real estate. The property was bleeding out thousands of dollars a month before. Without having to spend a dime on any physical upgrades we will drastically turn the NOI around. Somebody will be making lemon aid from your sloppy lemons if you don’t.

Sunny Hande Great question. Likely appreciation vs free money from IRS. What would your sale price look like compared to what you bought it for?

@Pierce Lovesee We use Appfolio but you can also look into document signing software like docusign and that should do what you need.

Get yourself a good manager and don’t worry about the peanuts. If the deal makes since your time isn’t best served redoing the flooring and leasing it yourself.

@Pierce Lovesee Digital docs are fully legal in my state, and I am very confident in our system...as long as it's paperless.

Why would you trigger a due on sale? You're leasing the property.

With several hundred units I can tell you going paperless is the best option. You may need to have paper involved every now and then for things like a Pay Or Quit notice, but you can scan and keep a digital copy.

You should read the 5 Day Weekend that Garrett Gunderson wrote. It’ll walk you through this.

Lease option it from them for with a lease payment equal to the mortgage payment cost. The strike price can follow the declining principal balance. Put a renter in there and ride the mortgage until you have clicked through a big chunk of the principal. They simply walk away without having to go through a short sale or pay out of pocket to sell the place.