All Forum Posts by: Corey G.

Hello Everyone, Let me give you the setup real quick. Over the past 5 years I have purchased 4 multifamily properties. I bought them all a little distressed and fixed them up and have mortgages on all 4. They are all cash flowing. I was looking to purchase another 4 plex property and keep going with reinvesting but I feel the market is a little higher than what I want to pay right now and the deals don't seem to be coming as often. I thought I might switch to paying off the properties I have (at least until the market improves some.) So these are my options:

1. I could save the extra cash from my rentals and invest it in something else until the market improves and then buy another property. Another property would be more cash flow but also more debt and I eventually will need to pay these mortgages off anyways. 

2. I own a house and I was considering paying down my personal property mortgage before paying off the rentals. I owe more on my personal property than the rentals but this property is not cash flowing and is just a liability.

3. Instead of my home, I could start paying down the lowest mortgage balance on one of my rentals and then when paid off, use that extra cash to pay off the second, then third, etc.

Whether I pay off one of my rentals or my house, the extra cash would go towards paying off the other properties. Any thoughts on these choices? I know there are more options but I didn't want to list them all. What do you think? Smart to pay off a rental first or my house? Investing in something else might be the smartest move but I need to start cutting into some of this debt I feel. Any advice is appreciated.

James, finding the water leak isn't the issue, catching it early is the issue. Last time I had a toilet leak, it cost me at least 200 dollars. Which in the long scheme of things isn't a whole lot but if I could install a device for say 200 dollars, that would notify me of a leak when its happening, I would never have a big water bill again. I'm all about reducing expenses and water leaks are unnecessary expenses that I don't get informed about for a month. I'm just asking for early detection. Not having to wait a whole month to find out my water is leaking. I don't think that is unreasonable. 

I've been searching for quite a while today and the only thing that looks promising is called water hero and its a kickstarter campaign that was funded but the product is still under development. A couple of people created what they needed using a water meter with a pulse output and some small circuitry that somehow connects online. Seems very technical and complicated. A wifi camera could work I suppose. I'd just have to remember to check it everyday and somehow ensure that the dirt doesn't block the camera from reading the meter. 

I did see that but I was hoping for a device (perhaps a secondary water meter) that would send me the water usage through wifi or something. More like a one time installation as opposed to a company monitoring service. I don't know what it costs but it can't be cheap and would likely defeat the purpose. I'd rather stay away from sub-metering the units as some of my properties have 4 tenants and 1 laundry. I have found a lot of articles on smart water meters being installed by some city water companies but not much on wifi enabled water meters for consumer purchase. 

Sorry, I reread my original post and I might have worded things incorrectly. Essentially I just want to remotely monitor the main water meter to detect when I have a leak in the building (so that I can fix it right away) and not have to find out on my bill at the end of the month. I hope that clears up any confusion.

Typically the leaks have been toilets which will constantly run and use water slowly. By the time I find out about it however, it usually is a big expense for such an easy fix. I did have an underground pipe burst once, as well as a leaking shut off valve another time, but that doesn't seem to be typical. I would just like to catch the leaks early so that if my tenant fails to notify me or doesn't notice, I don't have to find out on my water bill at the end of the month. 30 days of a constantly running toilet adds up. Not knowing how much water each tenant uses leaves me with a problem of how much to charge the tenant for the leak as well. Now once the leak is fixed, I would like to monitor for a few days to ensure the problem has been resolved and not have to find out on my next water bill 30 days later that the leak is ongoing. I figure a one time expense to prevent major water bills in the future might be in my best interest as long as it doesn't cost too much. 

Hello everyone. I've been reading on biggerpockets for a while but have rarely posted anything before. Thought I would finally ask for some advice. If you can help, I would appreciate it. 

First off, I have some multiplexes I own in different areas of the city and none of them have been metered separately for water so I pay it and just charge a little more for rent. This works well until there is a leak at the property and then I have a huge water bill. I'm trying to get my tenants to be a little more observant and have considered charging them if they don't catch leaks soon enough. The problem is the water usage is for 4 units and determining how much to charge a tenant for an overage is tricky. What if there were multiple leaks? So ideally, I would like to catch the leaks before they become a problem. It looks like there are water meters I could install after the city meter which do pulse output but I don't know how that works or if it will do remote monitoring. I'm pretty sure the city uses RF signals to read the meters. Is there a device I can buy that would read the meters once or twice a day and have that sent to me so I can monitor it. Has anyone found a good solution to remotely monitor water consumption? 

I've heard about online orders and the companies not honoring the warranty or having to sent parts back in for replacement? How accurate is that? I don't want to have a tenant out of AC for weeks waiting for the parts to ship. Also would you guys ever consider rehabbed units. There is a company here that gives a 1 year warranty on units and sells them for about 1800 to 2000

@Andrew, not sure if you misunderstood but I was wondering what to do about replacing several AC units at a time. I'm not super concerned with keeping cooling costs/electricity down. 

Hello Everyone, 

New to bigger pockets but not to investing in properties. I own 3 multiplex properties and Over the last few years I've spent a lot of money on AC units that have died. I have working (but old) AC units and the ones I haven't replaced are going to crap out on me soon I'm thinking. I'm looking for a better solution to replace the other units I have that won't cost me a fortune. I've spent between 2700 and 3200 for rooftop package heat pump replacements (which isn't terrible here in Phoenix) but 8 more of those is another 25,000 that I don't want to spend. So my question is what does everyone else do when replacing AC? I'm sure someone has figured out a better solution to this that I'm not aware of. Do you buy used units? Refurbished? Online wholesalers? Any advice is appreciated.