All Forum Posts by: Chris Clothier

Ha! I wish! I will gladly post it for everyone to get a good laugh. My younger brother handles all of our closings and he walked in my office with a look of disbelief dropping the report on my desk and his phrase was "that just happened"! Of course, the investor had no interest in holding up a closing for that to be repaired, but it was really funny. That line was word for word what was written as a line item for repair on the inspection report.

David Krulac - my fault. To be clear, I was being tongue-in-cheek and borrowing your words about gross negligence. So, I do think it is crazy for an inspector to make your contractor remove staples. And, I do think it is crazy for an inspector to stop work instead of telling your contractor good job for going above and beyond code.

I'm not as good with sarcasm on here as I thought! I am over laughing right now at my complete failure to bring a little humor to your plight. sorry about that!

Wow - that is really gross negligence on your part. I don't know why the installer thought it would be a good idea to be doubly sure the insulation held in place! No reason for anyone to go above and beyond anymore when they are going to cite you for doing more than the bare minimum!

Hey Jean Bolger, no worries on this end and no judgement against you. I said all I wanted to say in that last comment. I am sure you handle your business the right way and Steve gave good advice to make sure your electrician is on top of his game. I would agree with the electrician that installing two-prong outlets would be a crazy job to get paid for nowadays.

Hey Karen -

We had the basic outline set up in about two weeks, but it is something that we are constantly improving and adding new features. This week we added the ability for the managers to pull up invoices while in the field so they can see what we have been billed for when inspecting work. I know that it is more than many investors need and we are a company doing a lot of renovations each month so we have some economies of scale, but I wanted to share it.

Managing the process is so important and for us there are many different processes to manage! So we chose SF since we could customize it to do lots of things and not just CRM. I think you are so smart for looking for better ways to track and manage. i am writing an article this week for the BP blog about this exact topic and sharing some of the crazy detail we keep including tracking cost of nails. But the profit is in the details and I applaud you for asking the questions about how to manage your process better.

Fran Flanagan - I think you are over thinking the best time to rent a property problem a bit. Ours is very different as we see a spike in rental between February and May and it has been that way for 5 straight years. That being said, if they wanted to go on a month to month, I like Steve Babiak's idea of building in an automatic rent increase, but allowing that means that you have a great deal of confidence in the tenant to take care of the property and continue to pay on time. IMO, there is no reason to replace a tenant that is taking good care of a property and paying on time. Not even a higher rent. The trade-off of re-renting and making any necessary prep for the new renter is too high compared to the comfort of a good tenant. I would do anything I could to keep them including the possibility of going month to month.

Sean H. - so actually migrating the data into QB is the next step. We have accounting built in as far as managing and tracking invoices, but once the invoice is approved it is given to accounting to enter into QB and pay. The next step is the migration of the invoices over to QB so when they are approved accounting simply pays instead of having to enter and then pay. Great question. If you wanted to see what it looks like we would have no problem sharing it. We'd have to figure out the best way to do that, but we absolutely could.

Christian McNair - congratulations for joining the site and best of luck to you as you get started. The LA area is full of great people who know what they are doing in the real estate business and I'd bet you can find someone on here to assist you in person. Until then, this is by far the best online resource for getting answers, ideas and general directional pointers as you get started.

Don't hesitate to let me know if I can help you.

Karen M. - We used the Salesforce.com platform to custom build a form for our project managers to use. It is cloud based and integrates into a management system where we can track a project and attach it to a client or buyer as we manage the sales piece of the transaction as well. The nice thing about it is that our managers open up Sf.com on their I-pad and answer custom questions about each room and very detailed questions about the project. With the new I-pad they are able to take pics and video as well as use talk to text features for notations. There are roughly 300 questions for each house and local costs for materials are already entered, so when our guys hit enter, SF.com spits out a cost analysis, a contractor materials sheet, a pre-project Scope of Work and any internal docs we need. Then the guys just open SF.com each time they visit the house to update the project with pictures and notes and instantaneously everyone is up to date with what is going on in the project. It also allows us to upload and store any permits that contractors have to pull and attach them to final SOW.

It is probably more robust than what most need, but for a small amount of money each year, the SF.com program proves to be much more than just CRM. It is a platform to build your own custom stuff and if you can dream it for your business, you can build it and tie it all together. It has literally reduced the amount of time we spend on a project by 75% simply by making us more efficient.

Chris

I kind of expected that someone would go there...and...I knew it would have to be someone who could pull it off...enter J Scott! yeah - i voted for it - I thought that was pretty damn funny.