The Life of a New Jersey Property Manager & Realtor – Week 3
Tverdov Housing is a New Jersey real estate company founded in 2014 that offers property management and realtor services in Middlesex, Somerset, and Union County. We also act as a project management consultant for rehabbing properties. If you’ve like to learn more about the role of property managers like us, and what we deal with on a day to day basis, you can follow this weekly series!
Recap of Last Week:
–Last week we finally passed our rough inspection at 65 Guilden St in New Brunswick. Whew! The insulation inspection is Thursday and once that passes, we will be full throttle to try and finish in about 3-4 weeks for our investment property client. The tricky part now is ordering all the material and scheduling all the sub-contractors (trim guy, flooring guy, cabinet installation, tile, etc) in a timely manner. This is where you need a good construction project manager!
-One of our investment property listing in Middlesex County has had a lot of activity but still no offers. A classic example, unfortunately, but the price is too high and it was not our doing. The owner stubbornly would not take our advice on pricing the rental property correctly and insisted we list it $85,000 higher than we recommended (facepalm). Looking back, I shouldn’t have taken the listing if they didn’t want to accept my pricing advice. This is a good lesson for people looking to sell rental property in New Jersey, because now we cannot cut the price too aggressively or it comes off looking desperate. I plan to have a discussion with the sellers at the end of the month to get them to come to Jesus, but it will be my way or the highway. When we price homes without interference, we usually get them under contract within a few weeks! Listen to your NJ realtors people!
-We got zoning approval to demolish a garage and build a fence for our office property at 214 Easton Ave in New Brunswick. This is great because we will remove a dilapidated 3 car garage, install a beautiful new fence, clean up some brush and make the property more appealing. The tenants will get more room to park and it will offer more parking for our property management and realtor clients when they want to meet at our office!
Items to Do This Week:
-One of our existing clients is picking up another NJ rental property in their portfolio. Take a guess who is doing the property management of their South Plainfield rental property? We will work on getting them good comparables for the property like any good NJ property management company would. We plan to market the property in August and get a tenant in by September!
-Rutgers University announced that fall semester would mostly be online learning and that has led to some tenants frankly, trying to take advantage and just see what they can get out of landlords. On the flip side, July is arguably our slowest month of the year for student rental properties and now our phone has been ringing off the hook with Rutgers students looking for off campus housing in the fall. We were already 90% occupied for June and we now have another house that will likely be off the market by Friday (close, close, close)! Our recommendation to tenants looking for a rent break is to find a replacement instead, although I have a hard time believing an upperclassmen wants to be stuck at home with Mom and Dad another 6 months to save a few bucks. Needless to say, this will be an ongoing headache I navigate my clients through.
-We are preparing to get the fire safety certificate and certificate of occupancy for 90 Howard St in New Brunswick. This is on the back of beginning to correct some of the home inspection items. We already treated for termite damage, we need to trim tree limbs back off the property Friday, treat for roaches (sounds fun, right?) and then we can get inside the property at the end of the week and evaluate what else we need to fix up inside before the city comes to inspect and request more repairs. This is where we offer tons of value to rental property investors as we not only help buy and sell investment property, but we handle the repairs for getting the CO and passing fire safety inspections. This is where our NJ property management company separates us from the pack.
If you want to follow what we do day to day, check us out on Instagram: @tverdovhousing
Until next week!