All Forum Posts by: Brett Roth

Thanks Marcia.   My thoughts exactly and I look forward to checking out what you created.   It seems like people are having good luck in terms of catching maintenance issues before they get huge if they take the time to do the regular inspections.  

Hi James.   I wrote them up and took them over the building last night...I also brought cookies and icecream in case anyone felt like I was targeting them (which I wasn't) but also made it clear that I thought there have been violations done by guests of some of the tenants.  Most of the stuff is "common sense" and most of the important things are covered in the lease.   I made all fines a blanket $50 per occurrence for simplification, but I am curious what a judge would think.   Anyway its a work in progress but if it has the desired effect of getting some of these friends of the tenants to clean up their act it will be a success.  

Found this article and will peruse it and the comments...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/11/0...

Hello

      The time has come for me to implement and post "house rules" and put fines in place for stupid things like littering, giving out front door code etc....   My understanding is that house rules in Alaska can be updated and changed at any time for the benefit of the living environment, however I'd like to roll them out in a smart and friendly way that gets tenant buy-in and don't want to have to change them constantly to try and keep up with the infractions......   Anyone have a good example that they can share for C/D class properties?  I have the template from the BP "Book On Rental Property Management" and will use it as a starting point but need some additional language.  Any examples?   I didn't see anything in the fileplace but maybe I used the wrong search terms. 

      For an example of what I'm concerned with :  My tenants are actually really good, but right now I have an issue where a friend of a tenant literally just drops trash out the window!!!   Pretty unbelievable if you ask me.  I'm thinking broad language such as "All refuse shall be kept in a trash receptacle inside the building and disposed of permanently in the dumpster only.......no littering!  Fine for not following this rule is $50 per occurrence".  Hopefully this incentivizes the tenant to police his friend better.   Don't want to reinvent the wheel though...

Other than suggesting house hacking which is similar to what it sounds like Shari is doing, I don't have any particular suggestions as to the type of property... It really depends on what fits best for you.

Census data is correct. The rest is just old stereotypes. In my opinion your are better, at least in the near term, buying in Fairbanks and managing it yourself than trying to manage an Anchorage property from Fairbanks. Fairbanks is a long ways away (6-8 hours by car) and most likely you'd be needing a property manager in Anchorage. Did you say you are military? If this is your first investment property you might consider house hacking and trying to find some GI roommates. That could work out pretty sweet I'd think. Just be sure to buy right.

Hello Andrey.    I'm don't know much about the Fairbanks market but I'll reply anyway.  There might be some decent deals to be had because of the high energy costs in the area.  Which is another way of saying that you need to be aware of the high energy costs and plan for them in some way.   The traditional way is to pass them off to the tenant but I wouldn't be surprised if Fairbanks tenants are wary of that practice as a group.  Many tenants would appreciate is an energy efficient home.  The Cold Climate Housing Research Center is located in Fairbanks and they do some really cool stuff.

http://www.cchrc.org/

A house doesn't have to start out energy efficient in order to be energy efficient.  The second place I owned here in Anchorage I was able to bring from a 1+ star energy rating to a 4+ star rating.   State incentives helped with that but irrespective of the incentives the payoffs is evident every month in significant savings and I imagine that would be even greater in Fairbanks.

On a related note if a home is heated or has its hot water heated by a wood boiler I'd be hesitant because Fairbanks regularly exceeds Federal Clean Air Act standards in the winter due to all of the people burning wood.  Eventually this will have to end.....of course their could be some government incentives to switch to other fuels  

Got off on a bit of an energy and govn't incentives tangent there....Anyway, sorry I can't be of more help, just be aware of energy cost issues as one thing to learn about as you research Fairbanks....which is a eccentric but fun community in my opinion.  Many of the University people that one might want to rent to choose to live in super cheap "dry cabins".   Dry cabin culture, called "dry" because they have no running water, is a thing in of itself....awesome or horrifying depending on how attached a person is to modern comforts and conveniences.  There is a military presence but I'm not sure on the numbers of renters that come from that community. I have heard that the vacancy rate is quite a bit higher in Fairbanks than in Anchorage.  Anchorage has almost no vacancy though (2-3% at the moment).

Many thanks.

Ugh....

      I screwed up.   I wanted different email accounts for my real estate and personal so I named my email account with a name "______ properties".  Anyway, its allowed some separation of email which is nice.  When it comes to brass tacks......leases, receipts, checks, etc.- my name is always signed. Unfortunately a wonderful tenant had a check made out to "______ properties" and I don't know if I'll be able to cash it.....  The check is from a third party so its not like the tenant can easily "write a new check" and they said it took several months for the organization to issue the check.  I know my first move is to talk to my bank.  After that I will try to explain the situation to the third party and involve the tenant in that explanation if necessary.   I recognize that this is my fault and don't want to create a hassle for the tenant.  Also I know I should look into make this a formal business name, or as I've been reading a "doing business as" so as to avoid this in the future. Any other ideas?

Tyson,

I am also in Alaska and I've had exactly the same question. I haven't had the time to do anything with LLC's yet but when I considered it I ran into the exact same question that you had. I also spoke with an attorney who gave the same advice (keep a good umbrella policy).

Up here, relating to Bryan Otteson's point, I have had several people tell me that some banks "don't care" if you quit claim into an LLC because "people do it all the time". That said, I personally don't trust this and wouldn't completely trust it lest it were in writing and I think the attorneys are correct that acceleration can happen. I think some lenders are more friendly than others to the idea of putting properties in LLCs but with both lenders I've use when asked to dig into the loan paperwork the loan officers did find due on sale clauses. At this point I would consider Bryan's strategy of trying to get a lender to sign off on the transfer......It might work. Also I think that I'd hate to be the person who had quitclaimed into a LLC when the previously friendly bank had a cash crunch and called a loan that they wouldn't have called during "good times". I think that can and sometimes does happen and I imagine its really ugly. Some banks (the bad ones- typically faceless and non-local) are very untrustworthy and will call and loan on a legal issue just to get at the business's cash even if the loan is performing just fine. So personally, I will proceed cautiously with this but please let me know how it goes and if you find anything different.