COVID-19 - Uncertain Times

[Chris Sullivan]

Hello,

I am a new investor and am ready to buy my first two family property to rent out however the pandemic is holding me back. There is a lot of government assistant to help tenants to essentially not have to pay their rents for a period of time yet the landlord still owes the bank.

In my mind I keep telling myself to just jump in and figure that out if the situation comes up but others are telling me to hold off for a few more months and see what happens with the pandemic and economy.

What have your experiences been and what advice would you give to a new investors?

Thank you

[Jay Hinrichs]

Originally posted by @Mark Fries:

@Jay Hinrichs

Yeah I am just blown away with the amount of leverage that is pushed on this forum and in the real estate world in general.. Especially for this type of asset class..

You mention air conditioning systems and water heaters and it just makes me reflect because most all of my air conditioning systems are 20 or 30 years old with the older freon and they just work fantastic they never break there's hardly any problems I'm a firm believer that older stuff is better stuff... And being a contractor I'm doing so many renovations I try to keep the old equipment on the projects that I'm doing and I put it into storage so if I have a problem I have parts readily available for my repair guy. Same thing with water heaters most of mine are 20 years or older and they just keep working great and worst case scenario I gotta change out a $20 element.. Maybe I'm just a weirdo but I think it's this mindset that keeps me cash flowing excellent year after year.. I have more repair costs out of my 2 or three-year-old air conditioning systems then I do that ones that are 25 years old...

I just had to replace a 3 year old hot water heater in Vegas prop..  try to get the warranty they make it so difficult. and what are you going to do tenant is paying almost 4k a month and there is no HOT water why you try to save 800 dollars claiming your warranty.. you just buy a new friggen water heater and call it a day  :)  

My dad before he got into real estate about 66.. for about 3 years he had a business buying repo refrigerators and simply cleaning them out.. mechanics all worked then delivering them all spic and span.. he ran it in our garage and back yard we would have 30 or 40 of those old box's..  so I get it..  then he found real estate and off on to Mr Toads wild ride we went.