All Forum Posts by: Alecia Loveless

@Deepika Prakash Pick one market and try to become an expert on it. This will help you gain a bit of an advantage in your investing.

@Ana Estima Try to get an independent septic inspector that is not part of a licensed septic company. The septic company has huge incentives to try to convince you you need their products or services.

My septic inspector gives me an overview of the system as well as information about how long he thinks it will last. He digs in the leach field to ascertain how much life is left in it. As well as looking at all other components of the system.

@Tony Maldonado My heat costs get so out of hand I’ve made the investment in several of my properties to put in propane heaters that the tenants are responsible for paying for. The first winter with the units in 2 buildings went fairly well. I had to install units in the basements that I pay for as with the furnace not running as much the pipes would have frozen. One of my basement bills was $450 for the two coldest months which surprised me.

As for your water. My dad took the water bill in his building and divided it by 3 extra parts. So in your case you would divide the total bill by 6 or 7. Then you pay 2-3 parts and each tenant pays one part. Much easier than separate metering. No one complains they use less water and it’s not fair because you’re still covering a portion of the bill. But now they have big incentive to conserve water because they’re responsible. My Dads water bill dropped dramatically after he started billing back the expense.

@Amby Bhagtani If they don’t have knob and tube wiring you may still find yourself needing to upgrade the electrical. A lot of my older properties haven’t had much in the way of electrical upgrades over the years and I’m finding they don’t have (properly) grounded outlets. A less expensive way to fix this is to simply put one grounded outlet at the beginning of the run in each room and it will in turn ground all the other outlets.

I’ve also found a lot of “cob” wiring repairs when we’ve gone to replace dated light fixtures that have needed work by our electrician.

Often there may be some foundation issues. In viewing over 100 properties I’ve only seen 2 foundation issues that were instant deal breakers. Beware if when you’re viewing the basement extensive work has been done to cover up the foundation so you can’t see it. This is not as much of a problem with slab foundations.

One sign of potential foundation issues or shifting of the building is coming across lots of cracking in the walls and there being lots of doors that don’t shut properly (or have been cut down so that they do close). These signs are not always indicators of foundation problems but may cause you to pay extra attention.

@Corey Mika In my market 2 bedroom units are much more desirable than studio units. Most of my 2 bedroom units just have 1-2 people living in them which is super desirable. If you can do this your profits should be great.

If you can afford to separate the utilities as much as possible I highly recommend it.

@Jackie Mcmorrow I recommend becoming an expert in your local market to start out. I have 2 properties that are a 30 minute drive from me and they get significantly less attention from me than my 6 properties that are within a 5-15 minute drive. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to focus on OOS investing.

I’d recommend starting local and then maybe once you get a better feel for investing you can consider OOS.

@Alexander Rodriguez A big no. Tons of red flags.

Put it on the open market and find a different tenant.

@Genia Sanchez The only deals I regret are the ones I’ve sold. If the numbers work and you can afford to keep it I would consider holding it. Your price point doesn’t appear to be so expensive that it wouldn’t make sense to hold it. Unless you will gain a significant return by selling and you have plans for the proceeds to be reinvested somehow I would keep it.

@Victor N. Brown In my market I’ve been told 1st time home loans don’t qualify for pier and beam. Which if this is the case in your market may significantly reduce the market pool when you eventually go to sell the property.

I think you’re in a warmer climate than me but I’ve also had to do some significant and expensive upgrades to the insulation on my pier and beam properties. We regularly get down below 0 so that’s a big factor here that doesn’t exist in many places.

@James Holmes As long as there’s no prepayment penalty or a short prepayment penalty on the 30yr fixed that is the route I would take.

People have been thinking rates would drop for a while now but they haven’t and some things I’m reading indicate rates may increase due to long term situations with the treasury and the instability of this administration.

I'd hate to see you get several years into a deal on an ARM and find out that when you have to refinance rates have increased and your underwriting is now gone to the doghouse.