All Forum Posts by: Alecia Loveless

@Heath D Wallace In my area all kitchen appliances are included and depending on the area sometimes the W/D.

@Kelsey Vander Meulen We bought a quality hot tub 30 years ago for our B&B. It was regularly (4 days per week) used at least 5 times a day.

It lasted us 10 years and the subsequent owner another 5.

Buy quality the first time and your stuff will last years.

I would be embarrassed to have an inflatable hot tub at my nice STR.

@Shea Gajewski Find the most nit picky, thorough, excessive home inspector you can. Don’t just settle for any old inspector.

There is a world of difference between a great inspector and an average one.

Learned a $60,000 lesson this way on my first house.

@Maxwell Servais you could also consider adding a conjoined hot water holding tank. This would keep 2X the stored hot water for usage.

Personally I’ve got 1 tenant in my 8 unit building that occasionally complains that the water isn’t hot. The other 7 units don’t complain.

Some people just like to complain.

10 minutes seems like long enough for most people to take a shower. I wouldn’t think your tenant should be washing the dog all that often and if they are I’d have to wonder why.

@Tom Grieshammer it’s likely not worth it to buy in a bad area. Location is the one thing you can’t change about a property and it’s one of the most important factors.

@Logan Beckner if they’re otherwise good tenants I’d probably make the reduction in the rent. It will likely be cheaper than putting them up in a hotel.

@Adam Michel The inventory in your market is likely way down right now in the off season.

I’m used to seeing some inventory of MF in my area and only 1 4-plex has come on the market in the last 2 months. I did go to look at it and it had two issues. The first was the units were too small to be able to raise the rents significantly enough to cover the mortgage anywhere near the list price. And the second was that it was in a flood zone with the listing agent and seller saying it had never flooded but we were able to get confirmation that it had taken on water at least 3 times in the past year and the insurance agent for the property stated that with the flood insurance the premium would be close to $11,000 annually which meant the list price had to drop from $339,000 to less than $239,000 to make anything work.

Don’t give up. Keep looking and analyzing deals. A month and a half isn’t that long to be looking for a great deal. Also don’t settle. Know your numbers and your criteria. It’s very hard to fix a bad deal.

@Kiernan LaFaver I like to recommend to people that they sit down with a blank notebook and write a list of 3 month, 6 month, 1 year, 3 year, 5 year and 10 year goals. And then work backwards to make them happen.

This is a very fluid exercise and SHOULD be done frequently so that you know you’re making progress and can shift your goals as life develops.

If you’d like to own 10 SFHs that’s a way different trajectory than someone who wants to own 100 units of multi family and different from someone who wants STRs in different areas so they have a place to vacation occasionally.

@Brooks McCarvel I’ve already Posted once on this thread but I’ll re-post that I think if you’re leaning towards an MBA I’d try to focus on finance or accounting.

Just for fun my bookkeeper makes $50/hour which is 2.5X what the going rate for other jobs is in my area. While it appears she has a decent client base she can set her own schedule and take off work as needed.

It would be super simple to do something like this and get extra income around your pilots schedule for a while.

@Jessica Privitera When I bought my first SFH we carefully rehabbed it and furnished it. Friends wanted to rent it and so we did and they always paid on time. The wife had a local business and the husband had a good job. They always maintained the lawn and when we spoke with them everything always was great.

Fast forward to a year later the wife’s business had collapsed and they moved out as scheduled.

Upon taking over the house again we found all our furniture ripped and broken from careless use and the side and back yard were covered with broken glass from hundreds of beer bottles being broken.

We were devastated that our baby had been trashed. As this was prior to the internet as we now know it we had no support group. We determined the best thing to do would be to sell and not be landlords. So we sold.

The new owners spent days cleaning the lawn, repaired the furniture and threw the property us for rent on the newly created AirBnB platform.

For years they made bank as a pioneer in the STR market. I believe they eventually sold for a huge profit and 1031'd into a larger property.

We quit real estate investing and it took me 23 years to start again. It is my one regret in life that I quit as I missed a huge opportunity where beautiful property was selling for $30-$40K in my area. Today my portfolio would easily be $15M or greater if I’d continued investing 23 years ago.

To avoid any problems with your tenants I’d hire a property management company for 1 year to take care of the issues. Let the tenants know out of state management isn’t working and just let the management company enforce the rules and evict if necessary.

Often we need to be reminded we’re not running a charity but a business and if we can’t treat our property like a business we either need to sell it or hire someone else to run it.