All Forum Posts by: Steve Osowicz

Hey @James Wright you can go to: http://www.jcsoky.org/process_search.htm - go to search and enter the person's name. 

Welcome @Sasha Litvinov there are a lot of valuable resources on this site. Louisville is a good area to invest.

@Coleman Nelson I can give you my perspective owning a PM company. 

1. Correct, collect pay expenses and send payment - we did this by the 15th as long as the tenant paid on time (by the 5th to allow for any checks to bounce). We also did an ACH of the money out to the owners. Which was more cost effective and easier than checks. 

2. Yes, it can be difficult to get lenders and utilities to work with you as the "agent" of the owner. We never put utilities in our company name, it had to be in the owner or tenants name and we never dealt with the lenders for that reason. 

3. No, I don't think it would be common for the PM to pay the mortgage, taxes etc., what if a tenant wrote a check, you wrote a check for the mortgage, the tenant's check bounced and the tenant left or was evicted. You now have paid for a mortgage payment you must now collect from the owner. I feel like that is too much liability to take on. 

4. See #3 - don't pay property taxes. 

5. We had 3 accounts - an 1. Operating Account (the general fund of the business to pay expenses, payroll etc.)  2. Security Deposit (only security deposit funds were put in or taken out of this account) 3. Rent Account (only rent/owner contributions for repairs were put into this account). No, the owner did not have access to this account. 

Just an FYI if you are doing business in Kentucky - you will need to provide a monthly statement to the owner, provide the tenant with the account number, address and name of the bank where that deposit is held on the lease. You will need to have a real estate license, unless you are working as an regular employee of the owner of the PM, this is just a couple of items, there are many many more. 

Send me a message if you have more specific questions. 

Good Luck. 

@Alain Perez-Majul The lease should attach to the property and not to the owner, so those funds should come to you. I can only speak for our contract here in Kentucky, there is a line with the verbiage: "All leases, if any, shall be assigned to buyer; all rental collections, if any, shall be prorated between Buyer and Seller, based on the date of deed; and all security deposits, if any, shall be transferred to Buyer at closing."

So, if your contract does not specifically address this, I would add something similar as an addendum (unless prohibited by law). That way you receive prorated rent and the security deposit at closing. You should get the tenants information, application and lease at closing as well to ensure you have their contact information. 

@Jenny Keffer It really depends on your Management Agreement and what the terms of it are. I would say typically they run for a year and then continue in perpetuity renewing each year on the anniversary. Likely there is also a clause for early termination which would penalize the owner for breaking the contract. 

Now, if they have been negligent this should be pretty easy for you to break from them. Especially if they receive correspondence from an attorney. First, you can try to just tell them due to what you feel is them breaking the terms of the contract you no longer need their services. You should request something in writing confirming this, and they will not seek to enforce any sort of "early termination penalty". 

You also need to get your statement for 2015, hopefully they will provide that for you, so that you can use the information contained therein to file your taxes. 

Finally, make sure you get the security deposit, as the company should be holding that money as well. 

@Jason Fletcher You may want to look at the tool www.crimemapping.com in Jefferson County if you are concerned about safety, it relays the recent crimes and what types of crime they are. 

Louisville absorbed the smaller "cities" into the Louisville Metro (like St. Matthews), but they still retain some of their rights, like mayors and other city functions. There are a lot of rentals, but they tend to go quickly and I have been told that the rent is expensive in comparison to other larger cities. It really depends on what he is looking for, a lot of people like the Highlands area as it has a lot of small shops, restaurants and bars. 

The reason I mention all this is you can find a nice rental property in Louisville without having to go to a neighboring city. 

@Bill Hinshaw That looks great, any chance you will post some before images?

@Andy W. Our reports were $40 for the first applicant and $20 for each additional. I tried to set expectations first, telling potential tenants a few things. 

1. If you have any evictions, don't bother applying. 

2. If you have any felonies in the past 5 years, don't apply. 

3. If you have any drug with distribution charges or crimes of a sexual nature don't apply. 

I also try to emphasis that it cost money paid to the companies who conduct the actual checks. 

@Josh Norris if you already know what you want and can sketch it out - why not just take it to a draftsman? Should be under $1,000, you shouldn't need an architect for what you are planning. 

@Dean Suzuki

I personally would not, but that is of course up to you. The tenant can easily rent one, the problem with providing it is that you will have to repair it if there are any issues. The difference between washer dryer and other appliances is that most appliance won't be "overused". You can stuff too many clothes in a washer, or not change the lint filter in a dryer, let the washer go out of balance and damage the unit.