All Forum Posts by: Wade Sikkink

@Michell P. great idea!

I've never had a prospective tenant ask if anyone has died in the apartment, so it's probably not an issue from that stand point, but the neighbors might bring it up.  I would probably move ahead on the deal.

Good luck!

It's frustrating, but you can't get blood from a turnip.  Even if you got a judgement against him, he has no money so you will never see any.

I chalk this kind of thing up to the cost of doing business.  It sucks, but it's reality.

The expenses seem light.  You can easily figure 50% or somewhat higher for older buildings.  We have a 14 unit apartment building and the expenses are running almost exactly at 50% over the last 3 years.  For a 36 year old building your budgeted repairs are probably too low.  Our building is 43 years old and we have probably averaged around $1500 per month in repairs/renovations over the last 3 years.  Keep in mind we knew we were buying a fixer upper.

Just FYI, NOI is defined as expenses before P&I payments. It's what's left over to service the debt after operating expenses have been paid.

Another tip, sellers are generally more willing to finance when the property is in poor condition.  They don't want to sell it to someone, have them screw it all up, then foreclose on a property that's now in poor condition.  If it's already in poor condition, then they don't have that to worry about.

Personally, I'd dig a little deeper on this deal and probably would want a lower price to make it work.

Good luck.

Keeping track of your personal balance sheet and net worth is a great idea.  Most people don't do that.  An "objective" source of value for your real estate could be Zillow.  It's not the best info, but if you were ever questioned about the value it is 3rd party data.  Just a thought.

You can't put a lease in place until you own the property.  However, once you've closed you can approach the tenants with a lease agreement and security deposit requirement.  If they refuse, hand them their 30 days notice (or whatever time frame is required in WA).

Otherwise, you could require the seller to make the building vacant before you close or else you walk away from the deal.

Good luck.

Quickbooks is not made for a real estate business.  Too many "tricks" to make it work.  Buildium and others are too expensive unless you own hundreds of units.  I'm waiting for something better.....

As a small to medium landlord, there are really no good tools out there for you to use in managing the accounting of your business.  That's about to change.  alcalo is the first cloud based product designed for you.  It automates your accounting and gives you a very affordable option to automate the collection of rent from you tenants.  Learn more at www.alcalo.com and sign up to be invited to our beta launch in Oct.

Sounds complicated.  There must be a better way?  Quickbooks really isn't made for real estate.  I'm waiting for something better...

Quickbooks is not built for real estate and requires too many "tricks" to make it work.  Buildium is too expensive unless you are managing hundreds of units.  I'm waiting for something better.....

Quickbooks is not made for real estate and therefore is hard to use.  If you have more than a unit or two, Excel becomes too cumbersome to maintain.  I'm waiting for something better.....