All Forum Posts by: Soh Tanaka

I would just google "climate controlled storage Chicago" and start calling.

I do "additional interest."

Reading "Rich Dad Poor Dad" completely change the way I think about money. I think it's a must read.

A lot of us, property managers, use a software where the owners can view all kinds of reports 24/7. Tenant screening reports should not be available as that is between the applicants and the property manager.

I am also an owner myself, and I like to see the income/expense report the most.

Sometimes we need to jump in and figure out the answers. I do manage properties of owners just like you in Lake County. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

@Marc Appel Let's say you wake one day and realized that you don't actually own a rental property, but instead has extra $210k in your bank.

I come to you and say...

"I have a nice $450k rental house, and the tenants are paying $2,575 rent. The monthly 13-year mortgage payment you need to get to buy this house will be $2,173, so you make about $3,000 per year, assuming the repair/improvement is $150 per month. Also, you need to put $210k down to buy this house and pay $25k extra for the initial improvement. Your return on your investment will be about 1.3% per year. The math is $3,000 cash flow / ($25k improvement + $210k down payment). By the way, there's a lot of online banks that offer interest rate higher than 1.3%. Are you interested in buying this rental from me?

The above is not completely accurate, but I hope you got my point. Your money will only get "lazier" by paying off more. 

If you sell it, let's say you'll have $180k. Add $25k that you were thinking about using for repair, and now you have $205k. Let' say you buy 9 $100k rentals, and make $200 each after all the expenses. So that's $21,600 per year, instead of $3,000 per year.

Your current house is in nice area, and let's say it'll appreciate 6% per year or $27k. The rental properties you are replacing may only appreciate 3%, but that's still $27k (3% of $100k x 9 rentals.) 

Easy sell, IMO.

Obviously talk to your attorney, but just in general, putting a separate LLC/series for each property is considered overkill, unless there's substantial equity in it. I heard one attorney says $250 k equity is the quick-and-dirty cutoff line. I used to have a series LLC and made a series for each property and that was too much. Each series need to have it's own books, checking account, debit card, and so on.

What is the mortgage balance? 

You have way too much equity to make only $300 or so cash flow after expense. You will make way more money exchanging it to the right units.

@Wayne LeClair - Appfolio is for those who manages other people's properties. You have to be managing minimum of 50 units to sign up with them. Xero is much affordable than QuickBooks online. I used it and personally didn't like it. There are so many resources (youtube, books, etc.) out there when it comes to using QuickBooks for rental properties. 

I use both QuickBooks and Buildium. I use the desktop version of QuickBooks, as if you want the online version with the class function, it'll get insanely expensive. Many of us do bookkeeping at home/office, so I don't see a need to use the online version anyway. Desktop version, you can use it for years with no extra cost.

My suggestion is to keep using QuickBook and not to move to Buildium. Buildium's accounting function is limited, compare to QuickBooks, especially when it comes to recording assets and depreciation. Buildium might look like a "shiny object" from outside, but it's actually a pretty basic software.