All Forum Posts by: Patrick M.

I love being a landlord- gotta say, knee deep in the sometime frustrations of renovations and I still get a kick out of the ooo's and ahh's when I show a unit.

I show plenty of love to my in town hardware store and I spend a lot at my big box stores as well. I would find it extraordinarily foolish on my part to rule one or the other out.

Going cheap is not always a bad thing. I use the least expensive laminate floors and people rave. I get inexpensive local cabinets that are better built than most. I go big where big matters- granite counter-top, central a/c. I find the best thing is to spend time with others who have walked the road before me.

Bottom line is you can have the best materials in the world but if you have a jackass installing them, they may as well be the worst.

My units sell themselves- I'm not a salesman, I am a landlord. I price my units well and I refuse to lose a months rent because I wanted an extra $50-$75.... math doesn't work on a $1700 unit. I never try and sell a person on my apartments, the last thing I want to do is push someone into being my tenant... a salesman pushes a customer, which also means-

My tenants are not my customers. My tenants are my tenants. There is an entire section of my state's judiciary which is dedicated to the relationship between me and my tenants. They won't even do this for someone buying a house, or a muckety-muck buying a yacht. They all get thrown into the very same civil division and fight it out. Not me and my tenants- I owe them a higher duty of care then Mercedes owes Biff and Buffy. But believe me- I have seen a lot of landlords get in trouble when they treat their tenants like customers (i.e. self-help)

When I sign a lease I take on a whole host of very serious responsibilities and I enter into a professional relationship with someone about the most personal of things- their home. Likewise, they will be residing and using one of my most valuable assets. I do not take this lightly- I cannot equate it to selling them an ice-cream cone, a prime-rib or a vacuum cleaner. Therefore they will always be my tenant or the resident of my building. I believe this makes me the best landlord they will ever have.

I do enjoy reading others experiences, insights and opinions. Thanks for sharing yours.

@Deanna McCormick is spot on. I have gutted and renovated a pet building and it is disgusting. Dog and cat urine which permeated the sub-floor and required a complete rip out. I have heard stories of people trying to use the stuff they use after a fire to get rid of the smell and being unsuccessful.

Never will I allow pets. Believe me, I take no pleasure in effectively eliminating what seems like 60%+ of the renters... but no,no,no.

@Adam Michael I do it similarly- but I have them complete my application first. I have my own questions in there that I want answered and I have a little more pedigree info requested. When they express a desire to rent I send them to Cozy to do a nominal application- bare bones- just so they can pay for the background check. Works for me.

@Jessica Hunt I am certain others will have a lot of great input on specific programs for online based management. For me I find the best all around Program is adobe acrobat pro.

I draft all my own leases and edit them from time to time- then PDF them. Same with applications, etc. Tenants can complete them electronically and email them back to you and you can place them in a tenant/building specific folder. This is the same with any legal notices which need to be posted (you have a PDF copy) physically.  Pro gives you a whole heck of a lot bells and whistles. And I like having a copy of everything on my hard drive as well as the cloud.

Best of luck.

@Mike H. Again, you are reading far-far more into what I am saying then what I am saying.

All I said is it is far less clear cut because it is a hugely different type of loan.

Again- someone may not want to be exposed to negotiating a loan every 5 to 10 years when they are in retirement. You disagree with this- I understand, your position is that of course everyone wants to.

A commercial loan is not amortized at a lesser time frame than a conventional unless it is. I have conventional 10 and 20 year loans. But as a basic rule you pay down less on a commercial loan over the same period of time as a conventional because the interest rate is higher, no if ands or buts, if they are for the same loan term.

I gotta say, the more you go on about this the more questions I have... Which should not be an issue with someone you have already signed a lease with.

I think you would do well to be less concerned with your lease clauses and more concerned with your tenant vetting.

Best of luck.

79 cent a square ft. Trafficmaster lakeshore pecan at Home Depot. Light colored hides more than dark. 1st thing that prospective tenants (and inspectors) comment on- how beautiful the floors are. Love it.

Sounds bogus to me. If the guy is a 1 month payer then he would never have given his real landlord as a reference, and I can't imagine his landlord allowing him to stand by as a reference was given. And then the real landlord calls back to say don't rent to him (and I assume leave them stuck with the guy).

how does someone who pays one month rent on a yearly lease not have evictions in his background check?

I say honor the lease, ignore the flake and most importantly improve your vetting process- it sounds like it is a mess.

Or throw it back in the other landlords lap- tell the tenant that you received information from the prior landlord that no rent was paid and ask him to provide you with proof of cancelled checks.

@Derek Luttrell My point was that a bit depends on the community - water/gas heat in my case. I am actually in a far better situation because of the mitigation I did when I took over the buildings. The water and heat was already built into the rent so when I drastically reduced those cost- I effectively got a boost in rent.

I think that an investor would be most interested in having separate electric meters (and water depending on your community).

I have a mixed bag. My town has its own water/sewer and the bills are sent out quarterly. I would not draw enough from each unit for the town to separately meter and A quarterly bill would never work out with a tenant anyway. I pay roughly $1100 a quarter for each building. When I took over I put a pressure regulator in each building, this brought costs down and will likely prolong the life of the pipes. In the town it is standard to include water.

In one building I have a central boiler and old cast iron radiators- in the other I will have a mix of 2 separate furnaces for the downstairs apartments and new radiators upstairs running off the boiler in the basement. In both I cover the gas for heat- I have the Chicago control thermostats on and the buildings are well insulated (one more than the other). I was able to halve the gas cost when I insulated the attic area of the one bldg. Gas is cheap. Again- standard practice in the community when running gas furnace.

Electric- they are on their own

Gas for stove- again, on their own

I would go out of my mind if I was covering their electric. I had to tell one tenant who left their door open to the storm door in the winter that I would be removing the storm door if I saw it again.

A+ neighborhood