All Forum Posts by: Alvin Sylvain

I would suggest looking at paving parts over to be a Mobile Home Park. I hear those make tons of cash flow. All you'd need is loans to pave the road up to the property, clear and pave where you want to place a few pads to put on mobile homes, then advertise its availability. I think most people bring their own mobile homes, although you probably could put a few on and sell or rent those as well.

I'm fairly certain that once the road is built, the county will be glad to start maintaining it for the additional property tax.

Plan it out well, and you might be able to use it just an acre at a time. Grow as your customer base grows.

Get some advice from a mobile home park expert, which I'm sure can't be too hard to find. It seems to be trending these days.

I expect it's normal butterflies. Fear is a perfectly natural emotional reaction to anything New and Big and Important and comes with Risk.

Give your rational mind some exercise. Run the numbers once (or twice) more to make sure there aren't any little "gotchas" hidden in your initial assessment. There are bound to be some unpredictable "gotchas" anyway, and you just handle them when you find them. Remember, you still have your "Plan B".

If your rational mind is satisfied that all is well, then just tell your emotional mind to Shut the Eff Up. It won't, but you can tell it anyway.

Remember that old adage by that Important Person who's name I forget:
"Courage means you feel the fear and do it anyway."

So what's the question? From your description, it sounds all concerned parties are already on board with your proposed changes, so, unless you can't get proper permits from your jurisdiction, just do it.

Note that I have no legal experience in this area, so take anything I say with a carload of salt. You probably need to seek legal advice in your area to make sure all the T's are dotted and I's crossed.

Two questions: how old is this crack? how deep/thick is this crack?

If, like many houses, that crack has been there like forever and hasn't gotten any deeper/thicker than like an eighth of an inch, run down to your local home improvement store, buy a small container of wall patch, sand paper, a putty knife, some matching paint and a paintbrush. Use the putty knife to fill it in with wall patch, smooth it over with sandpaper and paint over it. If the paint matches well enough, you won't need to paint the whole ceiling.

Now, if this crack just now occurred, then perhaps there is something that just happened that maybe is serious. Then you'll need a contractor. In some parts of the country that could be earthquake damage. If the foundation is damaged, it could be the house "settling". If it's been there a long time without getting larger, the house has already settled and likely won't settle any more.

But my betting odds say you could probably fix it yourself in an hour.

You already have a ladder, yes?

Homes where you need an armed guard to approach safely. Beyond that, if the price is right, who cares what else is wrong with it.

2 bedrooms? New family with 2 kids will love it, at least until the 3rd kid arrives, but people don't have big families like they used to. Near a college, that's four students.

Main road? It's a little noisy, but get dual pane windows and price it accordingly.

No backyard? Who spends any time in the backyard anymore? Some people don't even want a flower pot.

Layouts? Well that's a real "it depends", and if the layout is bad, you price it accordingly.

Bottom line, for me anyway, the only real deal breaker is if the neighborhood is so bad I'm afraid to visit. Whatever else may be wrong with it, just price it accordingly.

 I've read somewhere that 86% of mining operations take place in China, where all the infrastructure costs are much lower.

Not on the West Coast. The government is making way too much money sucking up taxation, much of it voted in, and paying out almost none of it in terms of services or help for homelessness.

Critics have called it the "Homeless-Industrial Complex", paraphrasing Eisenhower's take on the "military-industrial complex".

I saw an interview of one bureaucrat, forgot the name, where he boasted how he was able to grow his department from a handful of civil servants to a small army. While the problem just gets worse and worse, the bureaucracy just grows and grows, and they're proud of that.

LA wants to build homeless shelters -- it's already a year or more behind schedule -- that would cost like $750,000 per person. By the time they actually get around to building it, it'll probably break a million. In the mean-time, there are charity groups who have plans such as building shelters out of old cargo containers, or building little "micro-houses", at costs that are a small fraction of that. All they need is a place to put them -- and permission from the City.

More government is not the solution.

 That theory might actually stop working with the recent explosion in the homeless population in most of the big cities, especially on the West Coast where you can camp out under the highway bridge and not freeze to death.

Yes, they need a place to stay, but apparently the sidewalk in front of your business can be perfectly suitable.

There was some mention of getting rid of pennies. I don't know if you've heard, but Canada is ceasing production of pennies, saying it costs more than it worth.

https://www.cnn.com/2012/03/30/business/canada-penny/index.html#:~:text=Canada%20is%20ditching%20production%20of,country's%202012%20budget%20released%20Thursday.

I am curious how much this will jack up the prices in total for the tenants

Find out from the previous owners or from the neighbors. The amount may surprise you, so it's best to find out in advance. You'll want at least a ball-park estimate should a prospective tenant ask you.

and if the property owner pays any of the prices like water, sewage, garbage etc.

Find out what is commonplace in your market. For example, some areas it is common to include a refrigerator. In other markets, the tenant provides their own. Follow the norm for the area.

And if it is best to have the tenant pay for these expenses how do you go about charging them?

If you have separate meters, you don't. They go to the utility companies themselves and get the service activated in their own name. They will receive the bills and pay them.

If the whole property is on a single meter, you pretty much have to pay it yourself and consider that as a cost of business, but again find out what's normal for your market. Apartments in Florida may divide the total electric bill by the number of units and charge that to each unit. This is because electric bills aren't very high, and you pretty much need to run the AC 24/7 to prevent mold. You want to discourage people from trying to "sweat it out" to save a little money, so this way they aren't saving much, might as well just run the AC 24/7.

Do investors typically charge a roundabout cost and put that into the rent (and if so, how can I formulate that roundabout cost for each unit). I know that there are sub-meters that can be installed into the multifamily home but a lot of places aren't built to support them.

Again, check what is commonplace in your market. You may actually need to pick up the phone and call people and ask. And if the place can not support individual meters, then in that case, you're just stuck. Stay flexible.