All Forum Posts by: Andrew Meyer

Bloomington's next meeting should be on July 15th, so would be great to see you there.

Great work! I'm amazed you only had 31k in rehab costs?? A roof and HVAC would probably be 1/2 of that cost... did you do a lot of the work yourself?

 16 years is beyond normal lifespan for HVAC unit?? What type of units do you normally use? Usually HVAC well maintained and installed and used correctly should last 20 years if not 25 years. Now it may not be the most efficient.

Old thread, but is pretty much what I was looking at. I'm going to wire them separately to each side I believe.

How does having interconnected units cause MORE false alarms? If the smoke alarm is going off, it's just that all of them will go off instead of just 1. I suppose a little more annoying false alarm, but a heck of a lot better if it's a real fire!

I've rewired my residents with interconnected smoke alarms and remodeling a duplex now that doesn't have anything, so will be adding interconnected smoke alarms. 

Yes, you can do the battery only powered, but they are usually more expensive, even more so if you get the interconnected ones which I feel are safer. I feel it is well worth it to spend a couple $100 MAYBE to get them interconnected.

My REIA has someone that knows of a law suit in town against a landlord. Unit had a fire that caused a death and investigation is looking into finding smoke detectors. Now, this is a pretty rare occurrence, but I'd rather have extra effort to interconnect if this were to ever happen to me.

5.25% on duplex we closed May 1st.

You could try Shine Insurance out of Bloomington.

My wife and I house hacked a 4/2.5 when we first moved to town without any issue. Rent covered almost all of PITA and now both sides rented and cash flowing well and getting stupid high cash on cash return (over 100%) since we bought with 3% down FHA loan.

Never had emergency when we lived there. Had a couple nights in like 18 months that we heard a TV, and it was a family of 4 or 5 with dogs (inherited tenants). I did do a fair bit of remodeling myself while I lived there.

Best purchase we will probably ever make since it was 5k down for 160k duplex (worth 230k now after 10k or so in remodeling and increased rents) and cash flow of $800-900/month now!

@charles sunn

One of the people from city planning talked with our REIA here in Bloomington and said they are estimating something like 20 or 30k new rental units needed over the next 5-10 years, so from what they said I don't see vacancy being a huge issue if you buy right.

I'm planning on trying airbnb in a new duplex on north side of town I'm purchasing. I did research and compared rents and airbnb prices, so I'm fairly confident it will work, but like with most things nothing is for certain.

My focus will be vacations/trips to town for graduations, games at IU, family coming to town/etc.

For costs, I added all utilities and a bit more to maintinance costs. Also, I am looking into management, but I live 5 min away and have someone to do lawn and maintinance so plan to self manage for now and bring in help as I expand.

I did read an interesting article that cited Bloomington as 3rd highest airbnb stays behind SouthBend and Indy.

It sounds like you may want to do property management? Airbnb and STRs would be a way to manage properties. I could see someone going to landlords and offering to manage their property AND pay them more rent.

Jenivee Schoenheit

Msg me if you can't find her info.

Good luck with your move.