All Forum Posts by: Amy Kendall

To be a successful real estate agent and investor at a young age, you are going to have to really be knowledgeable on all aspects of real estate investing.  People will trust you only if you can really show them that you are serious and have spent a lot of time learning your craft.  Learn all that you can!  Good luck!

@Account Closed You will find that it is very difficult to find any property that will meet the 1% rule in Utah right now.  Even at 250k, this house still should give you pause.  For example, you could buy a brand new townhouse in our market right now for 265k that could rent for $1650/month.  A newer property would have a lot less initial maintenance.  If your strategy is simply a straight forward buy and hold, I would pass.  But if you could get that price and put a small amount of work into it and then sell it for 315k, that might be a better way to approach it.

The BRRRR method is probably one of the best methods to not use your own cash

Rentler is a good website to look at as well.  When I am really serious about a property, I will create a listing and list it at the price I anticipate.  Then, I see how many responses I get over the next few days.  That tells me for sure that the property will rent for that price point and that I can proceed with the deal.  I am usually able to lease my properties long before closing on them.  If you intend to really rent your home, but you need $1800/month to make it worth it, then just create the listing.  See what kind of interest you get in those first few days.  If you are overpriced, you will know it for sure.

@James Kirby You are right about the setup you would need.  I have managed my own properties for a long time and then after I got my real estate license, it was sort of a natural progression to offer property management to investors I was working with.  I work with a lot of investors and some of them are out of state.  I often got asked for management recommendations and a few asked me outright if I would manage for them.  I finally gave in and it has been a good move.  It helps me stay in contact with my investors and develop good working relationships with them.  I have no intention of scaling my property management business, because I would rather focus my energy on the real estate investing side.  But it can be a way to offer a valuable, currently needed service to any investors that you work with.

@Braden Tomlinson. Maybe getting set up with a wholesaler would help you learn about finding and funding good deals. I would also look into finding seller finance deals that you might be able to put together without too much capital investment.  You could do this yourself by getting a list of absentee owners with equity and putting the work into calling them yourself.  When you get back, attend some meetings and get to know a few investors at the meeting.  I'm sure after you ask a few people in person how you can help them, you will get someone to take you up on your offer.  Good luck!  Also, keep analyzing and try to find a property that you can house hack.  Save all you can or find another way to come up with that down payment!

Also, we went through Lehi city and paid the impact fees to register our basement as a legal apartment instead of just a mother-in-law.  We were honest with what we intended to do with it and didn't have any pushback from the city.

@Brad Jacobson We just started renting out our basement as an AirBNB this month.  Our thinking was along the same lines that we could potentially make more money/month and not have long term tenants in place.  We have had one booking so far and that booking was for the entire month of July.  It's hard to say for sure whether it will be better or not though.  This month, we will net about $1250 after all expenses, and we could rent it out long-term for around the same amount.  Honestly though, we put a lot of money into providing all the furnishing and making it really nice.  We weren't in a huge hurry to get it up and running, but we could have simply put a long term tenant in place a few months ago and started making money sooner as well as saved that initial investment of furnishing it.  I think we will be able to make it more profitable per month, but I'm not entirely sure it will be enough per month to justify the furnishing expense.  We will stick with it for awhile and see how it does with vacancy throughout the year.

@David Fairall We ordered our windows from Jones Paint and Glass in American Fork.  I know they have a store in Provo as well, but I'm not sure if there is one closer to you.  

@Steven Davis Most of my time is split between Utah and Salt Lake counties.