All Forum Posts by: Dewain J.

I just started las year, not even a full year yet. I closed on my first property in august which was a single family home. I'm up to 8 units now. I think my best advice is just start DOING don't wait. I regret not getting started sooner despite having the interest. Now that I'm in, I'm addicted and can't stop thinking about it lol. Don't wait for the "right time", take some action that will get you closer to getting started today. I've been blessed to have a mentor to help me, and that has expedited things tremendously. So my recommendation to you would be to continue to read, learn, and see if you can make a connection with someone with experience to show you the ropes.  Philly is a great market for it right now too. Good luck!

I've been listening to a lot of the BP podcasts and I frequently here people, (who categorize themselves as buy and hold investors), saying they don't hold a property for longer than some designated time, 7 years for example. Is there a reason to sell a property that is cash flowing just because you have a held it a while? Some strategic advantage or protection? 

+1

I'm sure you'll have a lot of people telling you about low income renting and the problems which are associated with it, and there is merit to it from what I have heard. But one thing to note is with section 8 tenants, and chasing rent, many times their portion of the rent is small. So the payments you get from whatever entity (PHA in Philadelphia), are pretty much going to be there clockwork. The amount you get is usually a decent rent. And the amount from the tenant you'll still want to collect, but you won't be missing a whole months rent if they slack for a month or two. 

When it comes to investing in alarms and all that, I would think you would be making your margins kind of tight if you are in a low income/low rent neighborhood.  

@Martin Z. @Mav Larson@Julia Blythe

Thanks for all the great advice! I think I am going to mash all of them together and work to keep the tenant in place. 

I really like the idea of blaming the bank, and passing on some of the maintenance responsibilities to the tenant. I think they will go for that. Hopefully all goes well and I'll have a positive update to this situation in the future.  Thanks again!

Hello All, 

I'm a new investor and I recently acquired a property that has a commercial 1st floor and several apartments in it as well. The apartments were all in need of rehab and are vacant. The commercial space is occupied by a business operating on a month to month lease. 

To acquire the property I used a mix of my own cash and a hard money loan, so I do have some interest payments being made monthly, so having the business in there to offset some of that expense has been great, but I think that their rent is a little low for the space they have. 

As the rehab is coming to a close and we are looking to start filling the apartments, I need to address the lease situation with the business tenant. They have been operating on a month to month lease all along with the previous owner, and we just let it continue while we rehabbed. Obviously we'll need to sure that up for a longer term. Also I feel the rent may be too low and would like to increase it, especially since we had some capital expenditures that had to go into this space already. 

So I just have a couple questions. Any help would be appreciated. 

1. How can I go about finding out what the market rent  for the commercial space should be for the area? 
2. Any advice on approach in terms of addressing an increase in rent? They seem to be good tenants (they had even put some work improvements in the place themselves prior to my purchase), and I would love to keep them there and not have to deal with a potential commercial vacancy. 
3. How long of a lease should I shoot for, and is it normal to build incremental increases? 

Great story. congrats!