All Forum Posts by: Timmi Ryerson

@Lee Stephens:  I live in Sun Valley Idaho and owne and manage my duplexes..many of them in Tacoma Washington area for over 20 years. I started before there was any software to use.  I just traveled over once per month to do inspections and collect rent.  Now I use the software and it collects the rent and does the accounting..and many other things automatically as well.  You will be fine managing for yourself if you 1.  Use software and 2. find reliable vendors...a plumber, and electrician, someone to change out your carpets when needed, an appliance repair person.  Just make sure that they know what they are doing. Maybe use one of the software programs like Angie's List to find them.  There is another one that I cannot think of but they have reviews from users on the vendors.  Once you find a vendor you can trust use them each time.  They will respect your need for honesty and good photos of the repair and timeliness for the repair.  Then you can go to the property only for turns.  (They will get done faster if you are there to oversee the work)  If you want to do inspections (I highly recommend them) and do not want to travel to do them yourself, hire a local inspector or even real estate professional to do that for you.  It is worth the cost if you discover that the tenant is not caring for the property.  

Above all, you will be fine!!!  Let me know if you have any more questions.

Since you are so close to your properties, I will recommend that you look into a full service software that you can subscribe to which automates most tasks for you.  I use Smart Property Systems because it has everything I need and it is not expensive.  If you then want to change to a property manager at some time in the future, you will have all of the data for that property in your software and can transfer it easily.  Of course you would have to notify your tenant of the change, but it would not affect the tenant much, except maybe a change in the way they pay the rent.  Congrats on your first property!!

I agree with everyone who has spoken for full service software for property management.  I use Smart Property Systems.  It has a tenant portal for each tenant separately.  My tenant can log into the portal, see the invoices, see a running balance of the rental account, see charges and see payments.  They enter their payment methods one time and each month they use the portal to pay rent.  Once they pay, the accounting for the whole process is automatically entered into all of the accounting data software sections.  So I get up to date reports which can be customized for performance and accounting.  There are many other benefits but you only asked about rent collection.  Smart Property Systems will make this easy for you and  your tenant and is less than $20 per month if only have one unit.

Personally, I would not give keys to a vendor unless I was going to be there..or one of the staff.  If the tenant finds something missing or even makes it up, you could be in for a world of hurt.

You could use what I use, Smart Property Systems.  My tenant logs into the tenant portal and pays rent.  It is automatically accounted for in the GaaP accounting system.  I just check my rent roll to see who has paid or not.  They are all paying on time now because there is built in late fees that are added automatically and I just stay out of the way.  Everything you need is in one software.  If you manage for others, you have built in reporting for them.  I am a fan of having only one software to do everything.

Andrew Taylor: I use Smart Property Systems and they have developed the software to manage buy and flips.  You can list the property while it is in pre purchase status and track expenses until you make a decision.  If you pass the property goes into reject status.  But all of the due diligence costs are kept for your records.  If you purchase and rehab, you put the property into owned, add your costs, add the expenses as they are incurred.  Then when you are ready to sell it, there is software for advertising it for sale.  If you first tenant the property to hold for a year, there is all that you need for advertising to rent, managing the lease and collecting rent.  Most tasks for property management are automated. When you are ready to sell list it for sale and you have a very good accounting system and reports.

I use Smart Property Systems which has a system specific to management of the buy and flip process.  It can also advertise for sale if you are not going to hold the flipped property or you can tenant and sell.  It is very flexible and the accounting system is good.  You are able to move properties from prepurchase due diligence period, to purchase and rehab then sale.

@Anna Buffkin.  We support both credit card payments and ach payments on the software that I own for property management.  What we have found is that, because we add the convenience fee to the amount of rent being paid, that credit cards are rarely used.  Most payments are made via ACH.  But when a tenant comes up short for the rent, having the ability to use a credit card helps them pay rent ontime.  The other really important piece of data that I can offer is that in 15 years of doing business, we have never had a chargeback from a tenant against a landlord.  I could speculate that the software helps the landlord or property manager keep on top of the maintenance and communication issues which make more tenants happy but we do not really know why this is.  

So I would recommend that you offer the options to use both.  You can explain that the credit card will cost more to cover convenience fees and therefore can be used in case of emergency.  Most convenience fees are less than paying a late fee.  But I do not recommend that you only give them the credit card option.  From my experience if they are paying the fee themselves and have no other option, they will resent you and that can eventually cause problems.  I am not familiar with Venmo because my software does not use that service.

Yes and you can also market it to Professors and Ta's at the university.  You would also register with the housing department of the University for that.  The AirBNB idea is a good one for parents who want to visit and future students visiting the university in their college search.

I have worked with people who own properties that are designated for student housing and I have a few thoughts for you to consider.  The property sounds wonderful with all of the amenities.  It is more of a challenge to manage the pool and exercise room than you may think but students would certainly like to have them, as well as a fire pit to gather around.  However, most of our subscribers who rent to students have more than two bedrooms available in each unit.  That is because they rent each bedroom separately and sometimes even use separate leases.  The reason for this is that most students or student families cannot afford prices in the rent range you mentioned.  Usually the students paid from $550 to $800 depending on the size of the bedroom and whether it had an en suite bath.  The other thing that they did was to keep them as renters year over year over the summer by giving discounted rates for their agreement to return.  

You will find that there are students who do not make it in school for what ever reason and have to leave mid year. So you need to make your leases flexible enough to allow for an occasional flunk out or unplanned medical issue.  Sometimes students just run out of money and cannot return.  It would be a good idea for you to talk with the college housing people at the university from which you wish to draw to see what the capabilities of their students are with regard to rent.  You will also want to list your properties with them for students who come to them looking for off campus housing.  Hope this helps.  Good luck.  And be sure to check our software for your management process.  If you want suggestions, contact me via private message.