All Forum Posts by: Andrew Rinne

 Five years would be VERY quick. I was thinking less than ten years would be ideal. Why would apartments be a bad decision right now? What else might you suggest? Thanks for your repy!

Thank you! I'd rather not be a slumlord. My friend just had his first properties in very low-income areas. Not sure if that makes him a slumlord or not.

I may not even know what a slumlord is, then. My friend has property managers/a company that handles all his properties, I just know that he said his first many properties were in very low-income areas.

Thank you for your reply!

Hi all!

My wife Danielle and I are new to property investment. We currently have one rental property in Aurora, Colorado and are currently renting a home, ourselves, in Colorado Springs (due to the fact that she works in Denver and I work in Pueblo--so we're at a halfway point until we can figure something better out). 

Anyway, we want to continue buying rental properties. Our ultimate goal is to have around $1mil liquidity to be able to purchase our own land, build our own home, and still have a little bit of a buffer, while also having rental properties for our passive income.

I know we could fairly quickly get to $1mil buy buying and selling but I wanted to know what you all thought about what a good roadmap might be regarding that (how many properties to buy and rent vs sell, etc).

I have a friend who is very active in these forums who originally lived in Los Angeles and his first properties were basically in the ghetto of the middle of the US.

Would a good route be to purchase apartments in the ghetto and be a slumlord for a while to launch our empire? I know it worked very well for my friend because he owns hundreds of properties now.

Thank you all for your guidance on this. Danielle and I really appreciate it!

-Andrew

Also, there is no HOA for this particular area/blocks of homes. Deciding "proper" yard maintenance would then be up to the city. And I can almost guarantee there is a very, very easy city code (if any code at all) from Colorado Springs (one of the most regulation-free towns in the country).

Thanks to all of the people who had meaningful replies to my direct questions!

*Edit*, not actually sure if he's a moderator, maybe just a very active member*.

What is the legality in Colorado Springs, CO of asking a tenant to purchase lawn care equipment (lawn mower, weed trimmer, rakes etc) to care for the owner's lawn? The lease agreement says: 

"Tenants are responsible for proper yard maintenance and upkeep including but not limited to mowing, watering, cleaning gutters, raking, and shoveling of sidewalks".

Are there any Colorado Springs or state of Colorado laws that would prevent an owner of a home from requiring the tenant purchases their own equipment?  I would be looking for specific laws or statutes that would prevent or allow this.

And if it is allowed, the wording on the lease is pretty vague. Who is to decide what makes maintenance of a yard "proper"?  What if the tenants think "proper" yard maintenance includes lovely, long, tall, bushy grass?  What if they don't like short grass?  What if the tenant has a disability that doesn't allow them to push a lawn mower? What if they would have to hire someone to do it in this case? So I'd also like to know what you all think about the wording of the lease as well and what the tenants might be able to get away with.

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond. One of my close friends is a pretty big player in your forums/is a moderator and he turned me on to you guys a few years ago and you've always been a real great source of info for my fiance and me. (As a side note, we finally have our first rental property in the Denver area! So excite!).

Cheers, ya'll.

@Ryan Murdock

I want to make myself clear that we DO NOT WANT to stay here. There is a house across the street that is significantly larger 1680 sq/ft, three bedrooms, two bath, multi-level, finished basement asking $1400 (as opposed to the two bedroom, 1 bath 811 sq/ft we are in now for $1200). We are planning on moving our stuff across the street if our application is accepted; if it is not, I am going to tell the owner of the current place that we will pay him no more than $900 in its current condition.

@Ryan Murdock , it's not about the "89 sq/ft", it's about the blatant dishonesty and sketchiness of this guy.  But if you're wanting to talk about the "89 sq/ft" difference and how I know the exact values of other homes in the area, the homes in the area are all the exact same layout/square footage and with shared walls. Maybe 89 sq/ft isn't a big deal in a home that is 1500+ sq/ft but when you're sub-1000, it's a huge difference.  Maybe you haven't dealt with properties this small in quite some time but 89 sq/ft is a massive difference when you're already in a confined space.  But, again, the blatant lie about the square footage is just one tiny aspect of this issue.  We're living in a squalid hellhole and were lied to multiple times, 89 sq/ft +/- or not.

Hi all,

**Let me first preface this by saying that the beginning part of this is going to sound like I'm just an inexperienced renter, but please read on, I promise it's a very unusual situation and a problem to which I'm not really sure how to solve diplomatically. I am also a home owner with my fiance:

My fiance and I moved into a rental property in Colorado Springs, CO. It’s my fiance’s coworker’s brother’s home, by the way. When we looked at the property initially, over two months ago and at night with all of the previous tenant's belongings still in it, he lied and said it’s “just under 900 square feet”. I now know (after moving in) that it’s 811 square feet. He also said his asking price of “$1200/month is below market value”. I looked up market value and it is $1100 to $1150 if the house is in *immaculate*, newly remodeled condition. This place is beyond filthy and, arguably, unlivable.

The previous tenants moved out and the owner didn’t clean or fix anything. He told us months ago that he’d need a couple weeks after the previous tenants moved out to clean and either have the carpets shampooed or replaced, which didn't happen. The walls and doors are covered in holes, the place smells awful (like dog pee and old, nasty carpet, in fact, if we walk barefoot, our feet are filthy within a couple minutes), there are no screens on some of the windows and the sliding back door (which, btw, does not have a handle because the previous tenant broke it completely off), and I told him mosquitoes are attracted to me and that I have a severe allergy to them (there is no AC, so we have to have the windows and doors open at night to cool the place down, but can't without screens), he also said he would have a microwave installed above the stove when we looked at the place that first night months ago and did not do it.

I fully understand all of what he said was a load of BS but that nothing was in writing, so we can't hold him to any of that stuff *but* we also haven’t signed a rental agreement or given him any money yet--no deposit, no first month's rent, nothing--and we moved in on July 1st. 

What are our rights? I had him come to the house on July 2nd and agree to fix/clean stuff but he’s REALLY flaky (he was supposed to come look at the home we own up in Aurora to possibly rent it from us but he never came by, despite setting up numerous appointments and then bailing on them). What should we do? 

I have the square footage lie on a text message record btw.  I tried to have most of my conversations with him over text after getting a flaky/pot head vibe from him.

Thanks for the help and sorry for the long post!