All Forum Posts by: Alan E.

Welcome to the site and community. The make or break person for your venture would be the property manager. Just make sure you do your due diligence when selecting an individual or company. Referrals specifically. I dont have any advice on selecting one as i plan on house hacking and self managing my first duplex in the grand rapids area this coming spring.

Best of luck

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to set up an LLC you need to talk to an attorney who specializes in this sort of thing.

Transfering the property from yourself to the LLC could trigger the 'due on sale' clause of your mortgage which i think is pretty standard for all mortgages. I think its rare if this happens but just look it up so you know the risk.

Whats stopping you from getting the mortgage through your LLC? Are you doing an FHA loan?

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Welcome Michael,

They have a recommended booklist on this site which i have found to be really good so far. Best advice i can give is to pick one strategy and learn that before diversifying (learning buy and hold rentals before trying to flip houses). The first one is the hardest they say!

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I drive a 2014 Prius. i forget what i paid for it but i currently owe 9k on it.

I hardly drive it so the resale value is about 4k higher than what i owe on it, but honestly the gas mileage is fantastic and being a newer vehicle means the only maintenance i do on it is oil change and tire rotation.

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Welcome to the forum! Im about to get my professional engineering license so i understand why real estate looks better than engineering. Personally i dont want to do engineering forever, every upper level engineer i know works crazy hours and the stress level seems high.

Good luck in engineering and real estate.

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Welcome to the forum, lots of great people here and the advice has always helped me out

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The more cash you put down on the purchase, the more likely you are to have a positive cash flow each month. If you dont want to deal with the stress of it then maybe look into getting a property manager? Otherwise, if you do a good job of screening your tenants the whole ordeal will tend to work itself out with minimal daily input on your end.

Welcome to the forum!

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Im looking to purchase a SFR and rent out spare bedrooms (too much competition for MFR house hack in my area unfortunately). Using a lease for the bedrooms to be occupied.

How do you figure out what rent to charge? Is it something like a fraction of what the house would normally rent out for? For example the Rentometer website number * 0.75.

Is it better to charge a fixed rate at the beginning of the month for all utilities or split each bill as they come in the mail?

Is the eviction process any different then it is for a typical SFR rental situation?

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Originally posted by @Bruce Lynn:

Condos and townhomes hardly ever work for good rentals here in the DFW area. The HOA dues kill the returns. What we most often see is the rent is about the same as for a single family home investment, but then subtract $200-$300/a month HOA fees or more and your returns go down 20-30%. There are a handful of places that might work, but they are few and far between. Townhomes and Condos also present a whole host of other problems that close living seems to breed. Witness the current backlash of AirBnB prohibitions own associations have implemented. Others have prohibited or limited rentals. What happens if your HOA decides to limit rentals to 10% of the units, or wants 60 days to review all applications you get before approving your tenants. You think of the worst rule that could hurt your rental business and we can probably find an HOA that has implemented or tried to implement it.

Resale can also be an issue. In the current financing environment you would think that condos and townhomes are perfect price range for first time buyers, but few are FHA approved any more and some are what we call non-warrantable which makes financing more difficult. Think 20-25% down payment and better overall credit profile. We hope that will change and there has been plenty of talk about it over the past couple of years, but more talk than action. So it can leave you at least currently with poor exit strategy. You could be left with the option of selling to other investors who never want to pay top dollar to you.

All too often too I see a lot of deferred maintenance on buildings. So one day someone is going to have to pay for that. HOA dues often don't do it. Special assessments do. So you have to factor that in.

I always say keep an open mind, and if the right deal comes along be open to it, but that seems to be few and far between on condos/townhomes.

You'll probably be way better off with single family or multi-family in the long run.

I was looking at condos as an option if i couldn't get a multifamily. Great insight.

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Dallas, Texas

All Forum Posts by: Alan E.

Alan E. has started 18 posts and replied 38 times.

Post: Setting Up Landlord Bank Account

Post: New to bigger pockets and would love some advice

Post: First Time Investors

Post: Newbie from Grovetown, GA!

Post: What kind of car do you drive?

Post: First Post on BiggerPockets - Introduction

Post: Looking to start investing in real estate

Post: New to the forum, Just bought my first rental. Nervous.

Post: Renting out spare bedrooms in a SFR

Post: Investment Condos in Coppell/Plano/Frisco?