All Forum Posts by: Tarun Kapoor

I am installing granite in my kitchens. My install guy will charge $75 less if he doesnt have to polish the sink cut for an undermount sink. I am not worried about the $75 right now, but more worried about the long term costs of an undermount sink.

From what i have gathered by reading forums and google, the undermounts take much longer to uninstall if there is a problem. Plus i heard there can be leakage. My tenants are 25-30 yr olds who wont take the best care of it. So i thought i'd ask if people run into any issues with undermount sinks in the long run with younger tenants.

These are all good suggestions guys. Really helpful. I am going to be listing my first unit of my fourplex in about 2 weeks !! And will be asking for 1000 for 650 sq ft. Its in a hip part of the town with lots of young people 25-35. The rents range from 1 to 2.5 psf. Since its a decently upgraded apartment and from talking to the previous property manager, the people who would be interested will be 40-50K income range.

We are very nervous on how its going to play out in terms of filtering tenants and then finding a set of 4 tenants that get along well and be a fit for the property..

Kelly N., can you tell us how you reject the tenant if you don't get a good feel from their car in a way thats perfectly legal :)

Bill Gulley, I really like the bank statement criteria but how do you reject the tenant if you don't like what you see in the bank statement but other objective criteria like rent/income ratio, credit score and references check out ?

are you talking about new construction or flips ?

I am in Minneapolis so cant say this for other markets.

Every contractor i call is charging me 1.5 to 2 times the price. And these are guys i have worked in the past. They admit that its too high of a price that they are asking but they tell me they are working 80 hours a week and its a question of demand/supply.

What are others seeing in their markets.

Hi there, I live in St Paul too. I attended a couple sessions of MnREIA and they weren't helpful, especially for people who are starting up. Content wise, BP has much more quality content. And networking wise, MnREIA seemed to be targetted at full time investors..

I own a couple condos and a fourplex in uptown. Let me know if i can answer any local questions..

From a compensation economics standpoint, property management contracts are such that they don't align the interests of the owner and the property manager.

Property managers are contracted to rent out the property and manage it to get , say, 10% of the rent. If they don't rent it out, yours is one of the 100 properties they manage, so it doesn't move the needle that much for them in terms of overall profitability. If they do rent it out, they get straight 10%. The money they make is from the 10-11 months of the year they rent out the place.

Regarding performance measurement, there are not quantifiable measures to evaluate them. Normally, one should benchmark a manager's performance to the other managers in the area and give them commission and if they do better. i.e. if it takes 1 week to find a renter in an area X for $800/month and if your manager does the same, then there is no benefit to having a manager as you could do that too. In an ideal works one should take tenant surveys and see if your tenants are relatively happier than other tenants in the area.

Plus there are low barriers to entry in this business. It requires very little skill and most of it is not specialized skill.

If we as landlords could write quantifiable performance, prop managers will quickly become useful.

My 2 cents.

how important is to to remove the cabinets ?

Thanks Will Barnard and Beth Declercq

I am sorry for calling it victorian. What would you guys call it ? An old house ? :) Colonial ?

We really like the idea of swiss coffee but want to know what we are up against in terms of maintenance.

In terms of maintenance, does painting it swiss coffee or other such whitish colors, make the frequent touch up mandatory, as blemishes show frequently due to it being rental ?