All Forum Posts by: Andrew Watson

Ross, 

We pay cash, and we’re all-in (purchase price, closing costs, renovation) for $30-$35k. We obviously don’t invest in Beverly Hills - we rent to good people who happen to live in lower income areas.

On a home that we are all-in at $35k, our goal is to rent it for 700-750. They may be in ‘transitional’ areas, but our homes are nice - what we call “bulletproof chic”.  We generally have multiple, qualified applicants on the first day of open house.  

If we find a good deal and don’t have the cash on hand we will go to one of our investors to provide a private mortgage, secured by the property. With these numbers we can afford to pay generous returns to our investors,  provide a nice home to our residents and still make a fair profit.

Figure a way to remove it, without question.  That neighbor is an invaluable set of eyes and ears, right next door to your rental property.  The day we close on a new home we start making friends with the neighbors - it paid off just last month when a neighbor alerted us to some issues with a resident.  It saved us a lot of inconvenience and money - as a token of our appreciation, we had someone mow the neighbor's yard.

Second, you can save a substantial amount of money if you and your neighbor use the same tree company, and schedule it for the same day.  If they can do two jobs without moving their trucks and equipment it saves them time and money - travel, loading, set-up and tear down can take hours for a larger job.  

Good luck!

We’re 100% committed to affordable housing...which is mostly C class properties. We buy SFHs and we are all-in at roughy $32K. We renovate the homes to make them the nicest available for the price, and rent for $725-$750. Choose your residents carefully, take good care of them, and the numbers are hard to beat. 

Absolutely agree.

We were not under contract, but we had an offer prepared for a SFR that we planned to split into a duplex. I disagree with some that if the deal was good before this 'event', it's still good now. We put the offer on hold and we believe the short term value has materially declined. We will still make an offer, but not for a few more weeks until some of the unknowns become knowns. Our offer will certainly be lower than we planned originally. By no means are we sitting out - challenging times always present opportunities.

It hasn't hit us yet, but we suspect it will.  We rent affordable homes in smaller markets and put a huge amount of effort into finding quality tenants.  Our plan is to work with them on deferring rent until we return to the new normal.  Our philosophy is this: if we have a good tenant we are better off keeping them than placing a bet on a new tenant, regardless of how well we vet.  Vacancy is expensive and a destructive tenant can be devastating.