Simple and Effective Organizational Tips For Real Estate Investors

In this short episode, Tom and Michael share their file organization strategies to ensure pain-free access to all the documents you might need as an investor.  --- Transcript Tom: Greetings, and welcome to The Remote Real Estate Investor. Join with me today is,   Michael: Michael Albaum.   Tom: On this episode, we're going to be talking about the folder structure we use to organize documents. So a very pragmatic and practical weekend wisdom. All right, let's do it.   As I mentioned, this is a more practical episode of weakened wisdom. And this content is brought to you by Roofstock Academy. This is directly out of some of the coaching session conversations that we have some of the templates that we have, we're organizing documents. So this is a great kind of sneak peek behind the veil of some of the content and type of coaching stuff that we do within Roofstock Academy.   Excellent. So whenever I buy a new property, this is the folder structure that I like to use within each property, a folder for tracking or having ready on hand the purchase and sale agreement, the tax bills that come in any marketing collateral, like photos that was perhaps collected during the inspection that I can have on hand to share with my local property manager from the transaction, a copy of the lease and historical leases, the closing statement, the insurance documents, as well as the loan documents and the property management agreement. So a bit of a mouthful. So Michael, any thoughts or other comments on here?   Michael: Yeah, totally. So I think that's a really great way to organize things. So what I do, and I just pulled up my one of my folders, and I'll kind of give everybody listening, a walkthrough of what that looks like. So because I purchased mostly inside of LLCs. And I'll often form a new LLC for property purchases, I'll have all of the LLC documents. So first off, on my desktop, I have something called real estate. And then inside of real estate, I have all the LLC folders. And then within the LLC folder, I have the formation docs for that LLC. So the operating agreement, the articles of incorporation, Articles of Organization, all that all the formation documents, then I'll have property specific information that I can drill down to in property folders inside of the LLC folder.   And so like you, I have the closing statement, all of the marketing materials for that particular property, all the due diligence materials for that particular property, and I'll call that property docks. And then I break mine down into, I have additional folders where I'll have that year, and then insurance and that year and taxes. Because those things aren't static, they're not constantly evolving, but on an on between year to year there, they can be changing. And so I know that if I have to go pull my most recent property insurance Doc, I'll go to 2020 property insurance. And then I can also track it from 2020 2021 to 2022 and see what's been changing and can kind of compare and contrast those quotes. And then also have folders.   I have one right now that I'm working on a refinance. And so I have a refinance folder. So all of the things that I need to refinance that property are going into that folder. So bank statements, income statements, tax returns, all that kind of stuff goes there. And then if it doesn't work out with this particular lender, if I go to refinance with another one, I've got most of the stuff I need there, I'll just have to update bank statements and brokerage account statements, all that kind of stuff. So that's kind of how I have mine broken down. And then I'll put things in multiple places. I was just joking with my wife the other day, I'm a bit of a hoarder. I'll admit that   Tom: Digital hoarder   Michael: Physical and digital hoarder, yeah, by all means.   Tom: So you need some Marie Kondo in your life, does it bring you joy?   Michael: Well, we just spent like, all weekend, this past weekend, getting rid of stuff. And