Ambitious rental investor - Lansing, MI

[Michael Ulrich]

Hello BP Community,

My name is Michael Ulrich - jumped into rental investing a little over a year ago and love it!  We started with 1 in late 2018, currently have 8, and hope to keep growing.

I'm a regional sales rep with an Ag company for the past 12 years, and faced a slow spell mid-2018.  At the time I thought maybe I'd pick up a fixer-upper and flip it that Summer for something to do.  Well, I got outbid on several properties, because I was looking for a decent margin, and I discovered what a competitive market flipping has become.  At that point we bought one to buy-and-hold.  My wife and I both discovered our niche, and decided to just keep going!  

We live 20-30 minutes north of Lansing and are only investing locally where we can easily care for our properties - all SFH at this point. With past construction experience (particularly with windows and doors) I do the rehabs myself, subbing out plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc. Then I pass them on to a good property management company, and look for the next property. I'm thankful for a job that currently allows me time and financial freedom to focus part time on the rental business.

My goal it to retire when feasible and do rentals for our main income (along with another side-job I have).  We're buying nice high risk/high yield properties in decent areas, then rehabbing and updating them with a goal of about $50+/mo higher rent than average rent estimate.  In addition to having nice, clean properties; it's a pleasure to provide pleasant accommodation for good tenants!

I've thoroughly enjoyed learning from BP podcasts and forums, Brandon Turner and crew!  We have a lot yet to learn and am grateful for the discussions and insights of fellow BP members.  Feel free to reach out to me with any questions, advice, etc. that you care to share.

[Caitlyn Ulinski]

Yes, all of the rentals are under an LLC. We got the documents from someone we knew in the Pontiac area who owns apartment complexes and had his paperwork created by an attorney, and then we just adjusted the documents to fit our business. We haven't started using management software yet, though I'm sure we will as we expand. Most of our tenants pay in cash, which is starting to be a pain in the butt now that we have quite a few so we have stopped allowing that for new tenants. They send us money orders to our PO Box usually or pay with CashApp.

What management company do you work with? We have had really good tenants so far. We screen as best as we can and keep the standards high. We've learned that the tenants that are overly persistent about wanting a house or being able to afford it are usually some of the ones to watch out for. Overall though, we have had success so far. We treat our tenants well by working with them if they are struggling to pay or something (for example, we collect cash from one couple weekly because if they have money sitting around, they spend it and then can't afford the full rent) and we are usually pretty quick to respond to maintenance calls, upgrades, etc. so they usually appreciate that and treat us well in return. Which again, is going fine now but won't be feasible to make these kind of adjustments as we grow. So we will be looking for a management company for help before too long I'm sure!

Thank you! We are impressed by your story too and will be interested to see how your business continues to grow! :)