All Forum Posts by: Omar Khan

@Bill Bleich At the minimum use QuickBooks. But at your unit count you can get away with having: checklists, Google Sheets/Excel spreadsheets and separate bank accounts to keep your accounting clean. 

@George Genovezos You can always give the contract to a coin-op laundry company. They will put in the machines for free and split the revenues/profits with you (usually, 50/50). 

Minimal out-of-pocket expenses --> quicker payback --> less hassle as the coin-op laundry company is responsible for maintenance

@Ryan Corcoran This depends on the property and the owner preference. We prefer to have individually metered units but we look at 100+ units only. You can also implement a RUBS program (see if it's applicable in your jurisdiction). We feel it saves a lot of hassle if units are individually metered. 

@Robert Cooper Best bet: Tool --> FilePlace

Folks have uploaded a ton of material - spreadsheets, documents - that you can use.

@Kevin Burke I would suggest not looking at cap rates as they are a meaningless metric for the areas you're looking in. Unless there is a compelling reason - new businesses, school, hospitals - you will continue to see higher and higher cap rates on these types of properties. 

Why? Because cap rates are a measure of risk not return!

As @Bjorn Ahlblad said, I would need a lot more than a higher cap rate and "affordable" price to invest in Northern Ontario. Your biggest concern would be quality management and dealing with issues when invariably things break down. 

All in all, think deep and hard. Most experienced investors would do a hard pass unless there is a compelling reason otherwise.

Depends on the jurisdiction. 

TX = non-disclosure state i.e. assessor makes a "independent" assumption of the fair value of the property and assess taxes on it (in theory). This is adjusted for growth to avoid existing owners getting massively higher tax bills YoY (again, in theory)

FL = disclosure state i.e. tax % * price you paid

Some other states = limit growth by a certain %

Best bet: consult the local tax assessor's office and/or your broker.

 You did a great job and got the answer. Math is math - experienced people do the same as non-experienced ones. 

@Darius Anderson Once we pick our preferred markets (based on a combo of simple econometric modeling, economic research and where we already own assets), we just focus on 2-3 sub-markets in 2-3 MSAs at a given moment in time. Honestly, unless you have a sizable team of seasoned pros or run a PE slave-shop where you can grind Ivy-league analysts for 100+ hours, you will be fighting a losing battle. 

You've got to reduce the noise. Often times, more data is not better data. It can give you analysis paralysis.

For a simpler explanation, I wrote this post: Underwriting the Google Way: Building Maps. Not Numbers

That's great! You've already started building the team. 

Let me rephrase that: Experienced sponsors with sizable teams (greater than 2 people) do not go through 500 deals in a month.  

There is a ton of software out there and most of them do a solid job. Just pick the one that best fits for your budget and preferences. You can always change if you don't like it especially as it does not sound like you have a lot of properties.