All Forum Posts by: Allan Smith

@Cornelius Garland Ah! Thanks. 

@Account Closed What service would you recommend in the $5 range?

@Cornelius Garland What is a physical inspection?

I'm still somewhat in the dark about finding the phone number for sellers. Sounds like the general consensus is the services are inaccurate unless you pay top dollar.

Yes, I am surprised to see that there's two strong opinion sides here. It actually makes me feel better that I was on the fence in the first place!

As a little update, against all odds, she paid within the grace period yesterday. She went from 3 weeks late to within the grace period over the period of 3 months. Very unusual. Looks like I have no choice but to keep her this month, thus, I'll miss getting the med student. Looks like I'll be working with her to train her better in the coming months. A good learning experience and hopefully she'll become like one of the cases described above where she ends up paying like clockwork.

Thanks for the input, everyone! Each opinion was very useful to give me ideas.

I haven't been in the unit since she moved in, so I couldn't say if it's clean or in good repair. Maybe it's time for an "air filter change"! I'm hoping to play the long game by getting these med students in the duplex referring new ones in each time they leave.

I'm leaning towards asking her if she'd like to leave in 14 days. But if she says she will then doesn't, by the time I evict her the back-up tenant probably had to find somewhere else to live. Unless I could convince him to couch surf, ha. @Nicole A. is making perfect sense by encouraging re-training the tenant, but I don't really have time to test those waters if he needs a place the end of this month.

Given my time crunch, it might be best to just file the eviction and have her reimburse me the fees and any lost rent. While being sure to refuse any more rent payment!

Great feedback. I've noticed no one has commented on the timeline of getting my back-up tenant in there. Should that not be a concern? Should I not try to get her out quickly so he can move in?

Here's the scenario. One of my tenants has been 2 - 3 weeks late on rent (pays the fee though) ever since she moved in mid-march. In hindsight, I see what I did wrong, but can't change that now.

My tenant on the other side of the duplex is going to school to be a doctor and pays like clockwork. She's amazing, and referred me to one of her peers in med school. He shows promise to be a great tenant as he says he can pay 6 months rent up front and have a co-signer since he relies on school stipends for income. He's very different from the "riff-raff" in the neighborhood. He's available to move in end of May into the unit with the non-paying tenant (which is about when the eviction process would complete if I evicted the non-paying tenant).

Today is the last day of the grace period in my county/state. Should I offer to give her 14 days to leave, (or evict/  negotiate with tenant / cash for keys), assuming she doesn't pay today, and place the med student? Or work harder to keep the non-paying tenant to save turnover and vacancy costs? 

What would you do?

Definitely takes finding the right wholesalers. I bought a deal from one a couple months ago and loved it. All I had to do was show up and buy it.

Want to echo what @Christopher Blanco said. Buying houses at a discount requires meeting a need the seller has that is greater than their need for money out of the house. You know it's a win for them because... They accepted your offer! And yes, the wholesaler is absolutely doing a service to the seller!

It's true that many wholesalers don't have the cash to buy and that can cause complications. It is the wholesalers job to make sure the seller receives what they were promised, and then everyone is happy. If they can't close, it probably means they failed at negotiating or calculating the right offer. A truly discounted property will always sell.

What boggles me is that many flippers/landlords complain about wholesalers. This seems foolhardy. Make them your allies! These guys are on the front lines and could be bringing you deals! And, in that partnership, you can guide them to better business practices as they grow.

It's certainly better long term if you can get your entity structures in place now. And most people down the road will tell you to do it that way because to them it is simple easy, and they have plenty of real estate income to cover the overhead so it's a no-brainer.

If you're like me, it wasn't and isn't that simple. All the legal stuff can delay your first property purchase, perhaps because most rental properties look much less appealing with $500 - $1000 in additional costs for the year with entity set up and maintenance. Not to mention the longer timeline to learn and get it all done. 

The main thing is to keep moving forward! I went with my individual name on title for the first couple because I'm quite frugal and didn't want a bunch of expenses before I even knew if I had a business or not.

@Jeff Filali @Mike Cumbie @Justin B. @Eric F. This is great! Thanks for the feedback everyone.

While it looks like most of the advice represented here was from "non-wholesalers," it nonetheless helps me understand how to perpetrate a better reputation in my dealings with sellers. I didn't even realize I had been pretty much trained to lie to sellers. Going to be tough to break those habits, but also much more true to my comfort zone and self-brand.

Wholesalers have a weird pseudo position in the market. We are half agent, with rogue marketing and techniques, but investors love to get discounted properties! Right of passage I suppose.