Belfry Properties, LLC

09/14/2021

1. They Get the Mortgage Interest Deduction
Homeowners can deduct their mortgage interest for home loans with values of up to $1 million. They can also deduct some of the money they’ve borrowed that’s part of their home equity loan. But you don’t have to own your own home to get the deduction.
Landlords can take advantage of the tax break too by deducting the mortgage interest they’ve paid to buy or fix up their properties. This is typically the largest deduction that they can claim. When refinancing a property for more than it was worth originally, property owners can deduct additional amounts of interest and fees if the extra funds were used to improve or maintain the property.
2. They Qualify for Deductions Homeowners Don’t

Although there are many deductible expenses, deductions specifically for homeowners are limited. That’s not the case for landlords. Besides interest and mortgage points paid over the life of the loan, property owners can score deductions for different kinds of insurance premiums, including homeowners insurance and health insurance for their workers.
If you rent an apartment and you accidentally break something, you can’t get a tax write-off for covering the damage with money from your own pocket. But if you’re a landlord, you can deduct the cost of repairs that you’ve made for your tenants. Utilities like gas and electricity and property taxes that aren’t paid by the tenants are also deductible.
3. There’s a Depreciation Deduction
Another special benefit for landlords is the tax break they receive for the breakdown of their properties over time. They don’t get to deduct the full value of depreciation all at once, though. Rather, they must deduct those costs over a period of time: 27.5 years for residential properties and 39 years for commercial real estate.
When it comes to the depreciation deduction, there are other IRS guidelines. Only the value of the property’s structure and depreciating items inside the property (like appliances and windows that must be replaced) count as deductible costs. Depreciation begins as soon as the property is ready to be rented and ends either when you stop renting it out or when you’ve recouped the entire cost of your investment, whichever comes first.
There’s a catch, of course. The value of the land that the property sits on cannot be deducted. So for a $250,000 house, a landlord could only deduct the value of the building, and not the land valued at $70,000. If they rent the house for 27.5 years, their annual deduction would be roughly $6,545.
4. Travel Costs Are Deductible

Property owners who make routine trips to check on their tenants aren’t inconveniencing themselves, even if they have to go the distance to get to their properties. After all, they can deduct their travel expenses. That includes the cost of taxis, parking fees and gasoline if they’re using their own cars to make the trek. Instead of deducting individual expenses for car travel, landlords can opt to use the standard mileage rate, which is set at 58 cents per mile for tax year 2019.
If you’re a landlord who lives in a different state from your rental property, you can deduct the cost of rental cars, airfare and hotel rooms. Meals that you enjoy during your journey are deductible as well. It’s a good idea to tread carefully when it comes to deducting expenses for overnight trips, however. You could get audited by the IRS for deducting extra costs that you use to have fun while you’re traveling.
5. Legal Fees Count as Deductible Expenses Too
Unfortunately, some matters can only be settled inside of a courtroom. Landlords who are forced to evict tenants or take legal action for any other reason have the upper hand, at least from a financial standpoint. Unlike their tenants, they can deduct court fees and attorney fees.
Bottom Line
Property owners enjoy a variety of perks at tax time. As long as they keep up with their receipts and have documentation to support their deductions, they have the opportunity to substantially reduce their tax bill. If you’re thinking about becoming a landlord, the deductions we’ve mentioned might be enough to convince you to take the plunge.

09/08/2021

Call us today for all of your property management needs!

09/02/2021

For you to be a great owner/landlord or property manager, you must learn the difference between treating the problem versus the symptom. When a tenant informs them of mice in the property, a good property manager will first get them to lay down traps and see how many are occurring and then treat the property with a professional when determining there is an infestation. The truth is while mice is the problem for the tenants, it is actually the symptom for the owner. What a great property manager will do is question how the infestation occurred; mice naturally live in the grass and only come into properties because of the warmth. Great property managers will then walk the exterior, noting any obvious and less than obvious places where mice can squirm through and get into. They will dispatch a handyman to fix the holes, treating the true problem so that mice do not pop up again six months later.
For squirrels in the attic, it is the same thing. Bad property managers would just trap the squirrels. Good property managers would trap the squirrels and have any entrances to the attic from the roof and soffits fixed. Great property managers would understand that it is really most important to prevent the squirrels from having easy access to the roof and cut down or trim back trees, fix the entrances and then trap so that there are no remaining squirrels that know the attic as their home. In that case, the trees are actually the problem and the squirrels in the attic are the symptom of the problem. Squirrels will simply find new ways in or make new ways into the attic if the trees continue to allow them that efficient access.
There are plenty of additional things where there are symptoms versus problems. Backups are a symptom of tenants either flushing things down the sewer line or a disconnection of the sewer line somewhere. We as property managers do our best to educate tenants when they could be the problem or hire professionals to fix the problem when not caused by the tenant. This will save the owners lots of money in the long run by either saving real money from frequent treatments and/or keep the tenants in the property longer. Are you treating the symptom or should you hire Belfry Property Management to treat the problem?

08/14/2021

We own and operate a large portfolio of properties. We are looking for a skilled and hard-working Handyman to assist our maintenance department in maintaining our homes as well as the grounds and associated community spaces. We pride ourselves on sustaining excellent curb appeal as well as providing our tenants with safe, beautiful places to live and enjoy themselves. Your job responsibilities will include installing bathroom tile, painting, light carpentry work, installing cabinets, the maintenance and upkeep of laundry facilities, green spaces, and other important facets of our business.

08/14/2021

We run a multiple rental units and maintain a 90 percent occupancy rate for most of the year. We are looking for a skilled and hard-working Handyman to assist our maintenance department in maintaining our tenants' apartment homes as well as the grounds and associated community spaces. We pride ourselves on sustaining excellent curb appeal as well as providing our tenants with safe, beautiful places to live and enjoy themselves. Your job responsibilities will include installing bathroom tile, painting, light carpentry work, installing cabinets, the maintenance and upkeep of laundry facilities, green spaces, and other important facets of our business.

08/10/2021

Top Rental Sites SEO Rankings Report

Search engine optimization is one of the things we’re passionate about, and periodically we like to do a deep dive and get a handle on what is happening in related industries. Recently we ran across Andrew Shotlands’s post “IYP SEO Rankings Report” ranking the different internet yellow pages sites by their share of competitive search engine rankings, and decided to apply a similar methodology to see how the different rental sites stacked up against each other.

Since many of you use these sites to publish your rental listings, we thought you’d be interested in seeing which of these sites perform the best for the most important rental keywords in the search engines.

In brief, here is the methodology we followed:

Identified the top 20 rental keywords using Google Suggest and the Adwords Keyword tool (see below)
Performed Google searches for these keywords in the top 20 U.S. cities, with personalization turned off (for a total of 400 geotargeted queries).
Each time a site appeared in the serps, we awarded it 1 point for each position, starting at the bottom. (On a page with 10 results, the first result got 10 points, the second 9 points, etc.)
Weighted each search by the U.S. monthly search volume for that keyword reported by Google.

Summed up the points for each domain to determine its final score.
So, in theory, this data should tell us which rental sites dominate the search engine rankings for the most important and competitive rental keywords.

And here are the results:

Search engine optimization is one of the things we’re passionate about, and periodically we like to do a deep dive and get a handle on what is happening in related industries. Recently we ran across Andrew Shotlands’s post “IYP SEO

08/03/2021

DIY vs. Professional Property Management

07/27/2021

Effects of Pets & Animals On Property Value

Pets and animals offer many benefits to their owners, from constant companionship, to helping those who are disabled and need assistance performing daily activities of living. Cats and dogs work as therapy animals, going into nursing homes and hospitals to help people who are sick or injured. Unfortunately, owning animals can also reduce the value of a residential or commercial property. If pets urinate indoors, scratch hardwood floors, or tear up carpets with their claws, it may be difficult to sell a property for a fair price.

Cats

Cats cause several types of damage indoors. If their claws are not trimmed regularly, these pets may scratch floors, pull up pieces of carpet, and scratch at walls. Cats that are not cared for properly may urinate on the floors or spray the walls with their scent, leaving behind a strong odor that is very difficult to remove. Feral cats are also a problem for property owners. These cats tend to live near people, as they can rummage through garbage for food scraps and seek shelter under porches and in sheds, barns, and other buildings. Male feral cats mark their territory by spraying a foul-smelling liquid that can end up on porches, doors, windows, and other building structures.

Dogs

The extent of property damage caused by a dog sometimes depends on its breed. Docile dogs may never cause any damage, but bully breeds such as boxers and pit bulls may break through screen doors or gates. If a dog’s nails are not trimmed regularly, they can scratch wood, laminate, tile, linoleum, and other hard floor surfaces. The nails can also get in loops of carpet and pull them, leaving the carpet looking damaged. Another type of property damage caused by dogs occurs when an owner does not get a female dog spayed. When a female dog goes into heat, blood can get on carpets, furniture, and other fabric surfaces.

Birds

Cleanliness is one of the major issues associated with owning pet birds. Bird droppings and feathers can get on floors, window treatments, furniture, and other surfaces. If not cleaned immediately, the droppings can harden, making them extremely difficult to remove. If a bird owner allows his or her pet to eat outside of its cage, the seed hulls will accumulate on floors and other surfaces, making it necessary to vacuum at least once per day.

Ensuring you have the proper pet addendum's in place can protect you from the damages that may be caused to your property.

07/19/2021

Let us deal with the day-to-day operations of your rental properties so you can have more time to focus on your career, family, and on finding your next property.

07/12/2021

Tenants calling you all weekend with flooded basements? Call us today. We take the stress out of owning investment property.

07/06/2021

Tenant Marketing and Retention

Attracting the right tenants and keeping them is what property management is all about. This is one of the most valuable services that a firm can provide, so it’s important to make sure you will be getting your money’s worth by examining their process for each task.

Here's a list of issues to review and questions to ask the property management firms you interview:

Where do they advertise their rental listings?

The more exposure the better, unless the management company is billing you to advertise in places and ways that are not effective. Expect your listings to be on numerous paid and free websites and expect your manager to use offline channels such as:
• Print classifieds
• Signs
• MLS
• Fliers
• 24-hour hotline where prospective tenants can listen to detailed information about the property

Find some of their rental ads on your own to see if they stand out from the competition. How informative and compelling are they?

Any management company can list basic information on multiple websites. What you need is a company that understands how to optimize their advertisements for maximum impact. The ads should include all the information required to answer people’s questions, but they should also incorporate good copy-writing that engages the reader on an emotional level beyond bland facts.

What is their current vacancy rate?

This is very telling; if they can’t get or keep other peoples tenants very well, there's no reason to think yours will be any different.

How long does it usually take them to fill vacancies on average?

If they tell you longer than a month keep looking, regardless of what they tell you there's no guarantee it will hold up.

Do they know what their cost per lead is?

If they can readily provide an answer, you know you’re dealing with a manager who closely tracks the impact of their marketing and advertising dollars.

Who fields inbound leads resulting from rental ads?
The system is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. If well placed and written rental ads direct leads to someone unqualified to handle them then the previous effort was wasted.

How quickly do they return prospective tenants calls and emails?

The shorter the better; you are looking for a property management company who is aggressive in responding to and nurturing leads at every point in the sales cycle. This can be an area of weakness for companies who are less sales-oriented, and if neglected it will mean longer vacancy periods. If you want to test the answer they give you, ping the info on one of their ads and see how long it takes them to get back to you.

What do they do to prepare the home for showings? Do they take steps to ensure optimal presentation both inside and outside?

Showings are where the decision is made, you want your management company to be on the ball with paying attention to the details that matter.

Will they show a unit if it is occupied?

This is advisable so long as the current tenant is informed, the unit is presentable and the necessary precautions are taken to minimize the intrusion and disturbance. If the unit is showable then ads for the unit should be put up prior to the move out date so as to minimize the vacancy period.
Who shows the units, do they allow unsupervised showings from a lock box?

Successful showings require the manager to be organized and ready to sell. Prospective tenants will have lots of questions about the property, the neighborhood, the lease etc. You want to hire a manager that will be able to answer their questions and sell them on the benefits of the property. Using a lock box for showings hampers this process and also introduces the possibility of vandalism, theft and rental fraud when tenants are in your property unsupervised.

How many times will they show the unit during the week and the weekend?

Watch out for managers who are not willing to put in the time necessary to maximize the number of showings for your property.

What kind of a tenant retention program do they have in place?

Increasing your average tenancy periods will be a huge boost to your business. This translates to fewer turnovers and lower tenant placement costs, ensures a steady income stream and usually means responsible, well-behaved tenants. Pay careful attention to how the property manager answers this question.

Does it seem like tenant retention is a priority or an afterthought?

A good retention program involves providing quick responses to tenant needs, establishing regular contact to assess needs and ask for feedback, providing appropriate financial incentives, giving notice that rent increases are coming and being willing to explain rent increases.

Additional touches that engender good will are things like seasonal cards or gifts, a welcome packet, and newsletter.

As any landlord veteran will tell you, if your unit is priced reasonably getting applicants is easy, its finding QUALIFIED tenants that is challenging.