LandlordStation's New Feature The Vault

Landlordstation.com is happy to roll out a brand new feature to our user group.  This month we launched out our back end dashboard which provides the ability to offer several new products to our user base.  The first new product we have rolled out is our Vault.  The idea of the Vault is to allow our users to store all of their pertinent real estate documents in one place.  You can now keep all of the documents related to each of your properties in one place online.  This is a great tool and one of many we will be rolling out over the next few months.

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Trade Associations

Landlords, it is time to join and support your local rental associations.  Like any business, the value in your trade associations can be high.  It is a great place to share common problems and get best practice solutions.  It is also one of your best opportunities to find local vendors and local support mechanisms.  If your goal is to continue to build up your portfolio of residential or commercial properties joining a trade association and getting involved can be a great place to start.  Also, some of the National associations can be very valuable and quite a fun way to meet people in your industry that live in different areas of the country.  Some of our best national trade associations are the National Association of Residential Property Managers, Rental Housing Association, and National Apartment Association.  Check them out as well as you local and regional associations.  You will not be disappointed.

Posted by www.LandlordStation.com

Document Retrieval

Keep your documents together. Keep the documents digital and backed up.  LandlordStation.com provides the perfect solution for all of your real-estate document storage needs.  There are countless times that you will you will need to reference your lease, closing statements, tenant application, tenant report, home inspection, survey, construction documents, partnership agreements, etc.  Keeping your files neat and together seems so simple, yet not everyone does it.  Don't waste your time preparing things that should be in one spot.  Part of being a successful landlord in managing your time to the best of your ability.  Time is money and is part of your overall utility on the investment.  Do you best and get those documents together today.

Posted by LandlordStation.com

Good Tenants equal less hassle

Issues with tenants often avail themselves to the Landlord before the application is ever signed.  While not every property is blessed to have a plethora of available renters, the Landlord typically knows when they have a potential bad tenant.  As a Landlord it is responsible to resist the temptation to simply lease to anyone that looks at your property.  Personality and other meaningless traits aside, it is important to be disciplined in your rental process.  Meet the renters, use a Tenant Screening process involving a Credit Check from a approved bureau like Trans Union, verify financial credibility, check for past rental history, etc.  It is your investment.

Posted by LandLordStation.com

Valero Texas Open

Landlordstation.com congratulates Ben Curtis for winning the 2012 Valero Texas Open.  The Valero Texas Open is one of the longest running tournaments on the PGA Tour and is celebrating its 90th year in existence.  This is Ben's 4th win on the PGA Tour and first since his 2 win season in 2006.  Ben was an incredibly accomplished Amateur coming out of Kent State, and then shocked the golfing world by winning the British Open in his first try at a Major Championship, equally a feat by the great Francis Ouimet.  Ben was playing the 2012 PGA Tour season with conditional status until his incredible win this week.  Landlordstation appreciates all of the incredible charity work preformed by the PGA Tour and outstanding events like the Valero Texas Open.  Good luck to Ben the rest of the 2012 season, and we will see you at Augusta National in 2013.

Value, Value, Value...Good Value

I hear the cliche over and over "You make your money in Real-Estate on the buy side."  That statement rings true through the good times and the bad times.  However, there is a difference in buying properties for a good value instead of a cheap price.  Getting a seller to knock money off of his "Asking Price" is not necessarily getting "Good Value".  Merriam-Webster defines Value as : "a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged."  So to achieve a "Good Value" one must get better than a fair return.  One way to do this is to look at the fact that properties often have extraneous and invisible costs.  Closing costs, broker fees, inspection costs, time costs, hassle costs, etc, etc that can often add up to 7-10% of the price(double that on a buy sell).  Getting good value can often include finding ways to limit your invisible cost exposure.  Paying 14-20% to round trip a property can blow up a value proposition.  Send letters in the mail, direct to the owners, on streets with properties that you like.  Get an agent as a partner and use his commission as part of the purchase price.  Network to find properties off the market.  Be disciplined in your buying locations that fit your "leasing needs".  All of these things lower your exposure and help to achieve "Good Value."

Posted by Landlordstation.com

Your potential renter

Who is your client?  Often times people buy properties is specific areas, but don't really know who their renter is going to be.  Sometimes it is obvious, because the investment property is near a college or business campus. But in today's marketplace, where more single family homes are for rent then in any other time in history, it is really important to know who your most likely renter is going to be.  Different age groups, couples, singles, etc. often have particular preferences.  What is important to the college student and his buddies, might not be as important to the young professional couple.  Most everyone likes a nice clean place, that goes without saying, but when setting up the house (or choosing which one to buy) it is important to give yourself the best chance to maximise rent.  While anyone can rent in any area, it is always best practices to set your investment property up for your most likely client/renter.  Posted by your Renter Service LandlordStation.com

Property Taxes

Watch out for your property taxes.  If you own houses in a state that has high property taxes make sure you are extra careful watching the value of your home.  Property taxes will rise, but it is important to challenge those taxes if they rise faster than homes on your street.  Get the comparable values, as most Landlords own houses for the long term.  You can challenge your taxes with the taxing authority, especially if you have bought your properties in the last few years.  The best case examples is bringing in your closing statements to those authorities.  They will match them to your recent closing prices, and if comparable sales have been lower than what you purchased you homes at they will also match them to those closing prices of those homes.  When you own for the long term it is important to be efficient with all of your costs, whether those costs are: taxes, maintenance charges, interest charges, insurance costs, etc. be the best you can be.  Rental rates are your revenue and the rest are costs.  Mange your costs.  Posted by your Landlord service expert.

Maintenance Charges Revisited

A couple of weeks ago we looked at the importance of detailing maintenance charges out by your different properties.  I would be remiss if I didn't take that concept one step further.  Demand your vendors (if you use a third party) to detail out their charges on an invoice and then apply those details to different categories inside your QuickBooks or accounting program.  It is imperative to understand if you have an appliance that is costing you way more than it would be to replace it.  Use categories like: HVAC, flooring, roofing, landscaping, sprinklers, kitchen appliances, paint, etc. to determine your charges by property and by category.  As a landlord you are an investor and investors demand efficiencies out of companies they put capital into, treat your properties the same way.  Posted by LandLordStation

Escrow Accounts and Refinance

Often times your mortgage holder/bank will force you as a landlord to have an escrow account for taxes and insurance.  It is in their best interest to do this, and they will often offer you a slightly lower rate if you use an escrow account.  One thing to pay very close attention to is the size of these escrow accounts, especially after a refinance.  Often times the banks will hold too much aside for taxes and insurance, compared to what they actually need.  If you have recently challenged your tax invoice or lowered your insurance amount the bank will often not automatically adjust your escrows.  It is up to you to call the bank and adjusts these amounts or ask for a check for the overage.  Also, if you refinance a property close to the end of the year (or close to when your property tax bill is due) mistakes can be made with the payments of these taxes.  Make sure to follow up with your taxing authority and check through all closing statements to make sure invoices were not paid twice.  It is your money in those accounts, make sure they are holding the correct amounts.  Posted by LandLordStation.com

Ownership in the Neighborhood

As a responsible landlord it is imperative to try and understand the ownership in the neighborhoods you are looking at or buying in.  For instance if one owner or a company owns several lots in the neighborhood you are working, it is always a good idea to see if they will share with you their pricing thoughts or future development plans.  Sometimes it can be a tough task to get to someone you may not know, but you will often be surprised, if you go about it the right way, how much information most people are willing to give up.  If you are just buying one property, it can be very helpful to know the people that either own or rent in your adjacent properties.  Being a landlord can be about managing problems, and it never hurts to have some allies on the street.  Of course not everyone is nice, forthcoming with their plans, or frankly enjoyable to be around, but if you don't try you certainly will not get any information.  Posted by your Landlord Services ally.

Fast Growth Rental Market

The fastest growing rental market in the US, according to Fannie May's website, is single family houses.  They claim that the percentage of rentals in that space has grow from 30.8 percent to 33.5 percent.  While apartments and attached living spaces have long been thought of as a landlord's best friend, especially because of density, single family homes have certainly become in vogue for renters.  The question for real-estate investors and developers, is to figure out whether this will create a new demand for apartment and multi-family living spaces, or perhaps this is more of a function of the pricing curve on the housing market in general.  Only time will tell. 

This blog posted by LandLordStation.com your best source for TransUnion Smart Move Tenant Screening and Landlord.

Maintenance Costs

If you own multiple properties understand and schedule the maintenance costs out by property.  You would be surprised by the amount of property owners that own 5 to 20 properties and employ a third party to help keep their properties maintained but don't account for the different expenses per property.  Often times they use an accounting software program, i.e. Quick Books, and just have one line for maintenance expenses for their entire portfolio, but those programs have the capability to assign costs by property.  If you can avoid it do not co-mingle expenses between the properties.  Know which, if any, properties cost you more or less to maintain every year.  Most expenses in property management are fixed(at least for a year): insurance, mortgage, taxes, accounting, etc.  However, other than scheduled proactive maintenance problems do and will arise.  When they do they often cost you as a Landlord money.  Make sure to separate those expenses out by property.  The math of the expenses and your per-conceived notions about the separate properties may actually be off.  It is much harder to discover individual problems without the check and balances of detailed individual expense to lead you on the right track to lowering your overall costs.

This post brought to you by LandLord Station

Raising Rents

What Landlord is not interested in raising rents?  The idea of a higher percentage of return from your investment is one of the reasons your acquired the property in the first place.  Yet, many landlords fail to properly raise rents, or worse yet use the "feel method" when deciding whether to and push through an increase.  Evaluating the proper market rental rate for your property is a science that includes many factors, and the facts are that some people are better than others at understanding that on the fly.  However, I am here to tell you that "feel" method is not a smart method for landlords (especially individual landlords) to employ regardless of whether you think you fall into the category of someone who is good at evaluating the market quickly.  Use a strategic method for raising rates.  My favorite is simply to employ a spreadsheet and a set of dates that you feel are realistic to increase.  You only have a couple of chances (if that) in the year to actually put through an increase, don't waste those opportunities.  Think about whether you want to raise your rents well in advance of the new lease signing.  Figure out the best time to pass along the rate increase to you new or current tenant.  Always use a transparent method of communicating this increase, and leave yourself some time to negotiate.  The most important factor is keeping your place rented, however don't be afraid to raise your rents, especially when they are under market with a long term tenant they don't want to move!  Keep your places in good shape, use a strategic method, and enjoy the extra cash flow!

Depreciation

 People often talk about the positive benefit of depreciation on taxes.  While there is no doubt that lowering your taxable basis can be smart financial planning, understanding how depreciation works can help utilize it in the best way.  First off most people are capped out on passive loss limitation rules, because the majority of taxpayers do not have passive income to offset the loss past the allowable limitation.  If you fall in this bucket understand that taking depreciation will not help in the near term, therefore don't budget for its benefit when purchasing a property.  Secondly, if you sell the property for a gain you will be subject to depreciation recapture on the depreciation you have offset against your tax bill.  So when calculating you long term gain for your next tax bill make sure to set aside depreciation recapture if/when it comes up.  This note provided by www.landlordstation.com, the best place on the web for Tenant Screening through its partnership with mySmartmove and TransUnion.

Signs, Signs, Signs

Your best marketing and advertisement tool (besides your property itself) is often your sign.  While I can certainly talk at length about all the reasons that you should maintain the look and feel of your property, I wanted to talk directly about the sign.  A famous real estate investor once said "You may work for a 8 to 10 hours per day, but your sign is working 24 hours per day."  Pay attention to the maintenance and placement of your sign.  Make sure you have a sign that tells tenants or buyers that you mean business.  If you don't display your sign year round make sure you are strategic about placing that sign in the yard a couple of months before your tenant's lease is up.  You select the time it goes in the ground, but be very disciplined about that date ahead of time.  Make sure your contact information is easy for people passing by to read and understand it.  Pay attention to your sign, it might be the cheapest marketing you will ever have. 

Thanks for reading this entry from www.landlordstation.com

Step Number 1 Manage Lease Risk

What do you need to know as a Landlord?  Seems like it should be an innate process right?  You buy a property, you find a tenant, and then you maintain that property.  Well, there are people that do it right and build tremendous wealth.  And then there are the ones that miss all of the important steps and end up buying properties at the wrong time, and forced to sell them at a horrible time.  Through a series of easy to follow steps I will be describing the process over a set of blog postings that will be sure to make you the best Landlord in your area.  Time to jump right in with Step Number 1.

Manage your Leasing risk not your Home Value risk!  What?  The home value should move in concert with the lease market.  I am here to tell you that this is not the truth.  The object of being a Landlord is to own, rent, and manage your property.  Selling it is a matter of preference, leasing it is a matter of survival.  Manage that lease risk!  Look to the important factors in your area.  Jobs and Job growth, schools and students, location to usable retail, and population studies.  Look for areas that should have sustained leasing, because you can weather a bad housing market with an area that has lots of leasing prospects. Posted by www.landlordstation.com