Newbie from Miami, Flordida

[Jean H.]

Hi, all!

I just wanted to introduce myself.  I am a newbie real estate investor from Miami, Florida.  I am interested in buy-and-hold residential real estate in the South Florida area.  I have been interested in real estate investing for a long time but have only recently felt that I had the wherewithal to pursue it. After my brother introduced me to Bigger Pockets 6 months ago, I have been listening to the podcasts, watching the videos, and reading real estate books galore. 

When it came time for us to move from our starter home to our new home, my husband and I decided to keep our old house as a rental.  I used a lot of what I learned in Mike Butler's "Landlording on Autopilot" to find a tenant, with the exception of "the Rent Talk," where you sit down with the tenant before you hand over the keys and go over the lease agreement and agree on who's responsible for what.  I do not like confrontation and it just did not seem necessary since both the tenant and l had real estate agents representing us and I had assumed that one of them would go over the contract and expectations with the tenant.  This has come back to bite me in the behind with the tenant trying to pay late every month (BP has helped me to stay firm on this point and I am still able to get the rent on time every month, but it's always a fight with the tenant calling me "unprofessional" for not letting him drop the check off "sometime next week"), and a dog despite everything in the listing and lease agreement saying "no pets" (I let this one go with a Pet Addendum and an extra security deposit because the dog was small and seemed well-behaved).  So, lesson learned.  Don't skip "the Rent Talk." 

My new home also happens to have a detached guest house on the premises.  I have fixed it up and listed it on Airbnb as a short-term vacation rental.  I've had two sets of guests so far, and it's been going really well (more so than the long-term rental).

Despite my experience with the bad long-term tenant, I still believe that I can be a successful real estate investor. I am treating this as my business. To that end, I have created an LLC and plan to use it to buy more rental properties.

I hope that gives you a sense of who I am and what I'm about.  I'm looking forward to meeting all of you and getting to know you all better.  

Jean