#42 - I Built Something.....

Jeff Albaum

five plus units, which you just call multifamily. And if you choose one of these, like if we picked multifamily, you would just enter the number of units. So for example, I think most of, you know, I was doing a seven unit rehab, last year. And so in the fight was adding that into renovate hub, I would add seven units, but we're just going to pick single family for now. you don't need to input a price or purchase date and you can upload a photo of the property if you so choose. That was some early feedback I got. So thank you. Shout out Eric.

All right, we're gonna add that property. And so now that property is added in the software. So moving on down to transactions. So now that we have a property, we can add transactions. And there's a couple different ways you can add transactions. The easiest and most passive is actually through this bank accounts tab. So for those of you who have ever used Monarch money or Mint back in the day before, like any budgeting tool that connects to your bank,

it uses a software called Plaid. So this is the same software that we use here. And basically what it does is just connects to your bank account via your cell phone. So if you've set this up already, you should be familiar with Plaid. If not, it's very well known company and I didn't want anything kind of sketchy as it came to bank accounts. So no bank account data is touched by renovate hub. It's all managed through, Plaid. So that's an important feature to point out, but basically you input your phone number and you can choose and select your bank and then it'll have you log in and authenticate through your bank.

And then it'll pull in and be able to view the transactions that you give it access to. So that's one way to do it. That's the most passive way to do it. And then that way you can sync your transactions such that let's say you have a bank account tied to your specific property. This is going to work really well for you because all of your expenses are going to be able to be pulled into renovate hub via your bank account. Right? So if you have a separate bank account for, your property, this makes it really easy.

Another thing I should mention as it relates to properties is let's say you want to put multiple properties into a, an LLC or you have different LLCs based on each property. You can add an LLC by clicking on portfolios. And so I'm going to say first street LLC. I'm going to add that. And then you can assign properties to a portfolio. So I can go in here and I can say edit.

And I'm going to assign this to first street LLC. And that way you can track individual properties. can track individual portfolios or so you can see everything broken down by, you know, differing types, however you like to track it. So that was an important thing I should have mentioned earlier. Okay. So moving back to transactions, we've talked about how to import them via your bank account. There's also this import button you can use. can, if you have all your transactions saved in a spreadsheet.

You can import them via that spreadsheet. Um, and so that's one way to do it. And then the last week or the second way to do it. And the last way to add a transaction is just manually. So if you hit add transaction, um, for example, let's say our tenant pays us rent. And so let's say that's a thousand bucks and we'll call that income. We only have one property listed and we're going to say rents. Let's say they pay rent on the first of the month.

And so an option here is you can say, you can add a photo or upload a file. So let's say, it wouldn't really be applicable for rent, but if you did have, an expense of some sort, which I'll show you in a second and you had a receipt from home Depot or something, you can upload that receipt and it should auto fill or take its best guess using AI to fill out this transaction for you. So we're going to go ahead and save this transaction.

And now let's add some expenses. So we'll say property management.

and they charge 10 % of rent. So a thousand bucks times 10 % is a hundred dollars. It's an expense. First property, management fees.

And so all these categories, you can always choose like a general one at the top here in case you don't want to go as nitty gritty, but I like to include as many as possible for those of who do like to go nitty gritty. And I'll show you what this all kind of leads to at the end. leads to a cashflow statement, which I think is one of the coolest features, but we'll call it property management. And let's say they charge that on the 15th of the month. Okay.

And I'm actually going to mark this as recurring. And I'll tell you why in a second. And we'll say that it's recurring monthly. And save.

And let's add a couple more. Let's say we have our mortgage. So we're going to pay our lender. Let's say that's $500. It's an expense.

Mortgage. It's also on the let's call it on the third. And we're going to mark that as recurring as well. Okay. So now we have a couple of transactions added, right? We've got our tenant paying us rent. We've got property management fee that we pay and we have our mortgage that we pay every month. So when I said I marked it as recurring, you'll see this little icon that says recurring and then the frequency that it's recurring. So if you do need to edit it, you can just click on a transaction to edit it via the pencil.

and you can change this frequency to whatever it needs to be. But in this case, there's no change. So what that does is pretty cool. So like if you have your mortgage payment, you obviously pay every month and you want to go in and add your mortgage for April, right? All you need to do because it's already marked recurring, and you can come over here to this button, click it, and it'll add the next mortgage payment during the next frequency that you identified here. So in this case, April.

we're going to delete that for one second, but so same thing for any other transaction that you mark recurring. it just makes it easier. So you don't have to go in and redo that transaction every time. Also, it gives you a little bit of a precursor. says your net income here, which is kind of fun. okay. So before we get to reports, which is one of the coolest things that I think kind of sums everything together and ties it all together, let's talk about rehabs. So again, not selling broken record. did a seven unit rehab.

last year and I learned a lot and part of the thing that I really wanted was some way to track and manage that rehab in a central place because I was getting so many different pieces of information for so many different people and it's really hard to keep that all in one place. So you again, you can use a spreadsheet. You absolutely can. This is kind of intended for those that want a little bit cleaner of a user experience, user interface and have a one-stop shop to be able to upload documents as well as keep track of things.

That a spreadsheet can do you totally can, but this is just, my opinion, a little bit cleaner and a way to, for me to stay organized. So out further ado. So here's the rehab projects. So again, no rehab projects created yet. Let's create our first one. And let's say we're renovating the kitchen. It's a great, great first start at first property. You don't need to include this information. You can, if you want just to help you stay, stay sane. We're going to create it.

And then when we dive in here, we can add an expense specifically related to the kitchen renovation. Right. And this will go in again, it'll make a little bit more sense when we talk through the reports at the end. But, if you remember in real estate, anything that you do that is called a capital expense, you want to notate a separate from repairs and maintenance. So repairs and maintenance is, Hey, the sink got clogged. Go ahead and repair it. A capital expenses, you know, you're going to need a new roof every 20 years.

So a new roof isn't really maintenance, but you know that it's scheduled capital expenditures. They're treated differently for tax purposes. They're also treated differently for calculating your net operating income, as well as your net cashflow. So is that a lot there? Bear with me, it'll make sense in a couple seconds. So first off, we're gonna add an expense related to the kitchen renovation. So let's say we went to Home Depot and we spent 200 bucks on

new countertops. I don't know, making stuff up. So, or we'll say appliances. We bought a new microwave or stove. We're to go ahead and add that. And so now it starts to populate. So as you, as you add more transactions, you're going to see visual breakdowns of what you spent by category as well as spending per unit. Obviously as a single family home, this doesn't really, the unit is less important than the entire building. Um, but this is to tell you your total spend so far on the project and you can see your

expenses down here. The other really cool thing that is super low tech, but I think is really cool and helpful. one of the hardest things during the renovation for me was, okay, I'm on the phone three times a day with three different contractors. They're all telling me different information about different things. need a way to keep track of them. So for me, I went with a super low tech solution and that was writing down basic notes. So I made that.

So in this project notes tab, you can add a new note and this is what literally what I do. So let's say it's today it's Mark 26. So would go three 26. James said unit one or here, cause we're doing the kitchen. James said, cabinets will be done by Wednesday. That's it. And now I have just this quick mental note of like, okay, cool. next time I'm on the phone with James, I'm like, what did you say? Okay. Okay.

Last Thursday, you said the cabin's going to be done by Wednesday. How's that looking? Right. We still on track for that. Right. And every day I would just literally go, okay, cool. update the plumber is late cabinets pushed back. Right. Or something to that event, not complicated, right. But then it's super helpful for me to have this in the same screen as how much money I'm spending and all my expenses. I found that super, super useful and helpful. So hopefully you do too.

Another cool thing that you can do is you can add receipts. And so you can share and keep track of all your receipts by uploading a file to the expense. And that way you can see everything you've spent. If you need to send it to your accountant at the end of the year, you have it all in one place.

Okay, so all that to say is all that information you've input and it is helpful to see at as you're adding it. I think one of the most helpful parts is when we can pull it all together into a report. So if we click on report, we're going to see that we didn't add information for January and February, right? So that's why the graph is empty for January and February. You can filter by portfolios, by properties, et cetera. And you can print this as a PDF if you so choose.

Um, and it gives you a snapshot of, okay, your total revenue, your total expenses and your net cashflow. So off the bat, you can see, Hey, how'd I do? How am I doing? And again, it's important to note that the start date and end date matters because the time is very important. But so in this case, it's only we're only doing March, right? So we know, okay, we brought in a thousand bucks. We spent $800. We have $200 in cashflow. Awesome. Here's a little bar chart. And then this cashflow statement is the thing that as a numbers nerd, I really, really like. So as you add different categories, they'll appear.

here on this net cash flow statement. So because we only have a rents for income, all we're seeing is rents. If you are interested, you're like, what was what was that property management expense? You can click on the number and it'll take you and show you a snapshot of the transaction. And you can click go to transaction if you want to see the entirety of the transaction.

So we'll keep scrolling down. This is the net operating income. I was explaining earlier in real estate, your income, so your rent minus your operating expenses equals your net operating income. It's a little bit tricky because your net operating income is in this case is $900, but your net cashflow is only 200 because net operating income does not include your mortgage payment or any capital expenditures. So because the kitchen remodel counts as a capital expenditure and our mortgage is

below the net operating income, we need to subtract those in order to get our true net cashflow number. Transfers is for, let's say you do have a property manager, right? And so sometimes they will send you money after the end of every month, but it's not true income because it's already accounted for the rents and stuff that has been added. So transfers are saying, hey, we transferred cash to your bank account and this was the amount that we transferred. So it's a little bit different than net cashflow.

But that's all the functionality that I wanted to share. So again, I'm super excited about this. I would love anyone's feedback. If you do have feedback, you can use this send feedback button. It's pretty nifty. And you can request either a new feature. So you're saying, hey, I'd be really cool if such and such, and send that over and I'll get a copy of it. You can report a bug if something's not working, or if you just want to say, hey, feel free to use other. But that's it. So again, if you or anyone

You know, what do you think would get value out of using this? Please send them the link renovate hub.co. I will link it in the show notes and the description. And, I'm super excited about it. So again, I appreciate you going on the journey with me and let me know if you have any comments or feedback below. All right. Bye everybody.