All Forum Posts by: Andy Collins

I took a class given by a city I have a couple of properties in last month, they are now saying that if a tenant takes a battery out of a smoke detector, the tenant has liabiity.

They encourged us to tell tenants it is there responsability to replace the battery or let teh LL know

for me the rental amount on zillow seems to be very accurate, the only problem I have with rentometer is it seems to establish an apartment rental rate, not for a single family home

I agree with Tom, the best deals I am finding right now are short sales, the super deals in REOs are getting really hard to find,,,the market has been firming up for several months in my area.

if the carpet is 6 years old, and the tenant caused some stains, I can't see charging them for total replacement is fair (and I try to "fair" as my guide and it keeps me out of court)

If it is brand new carpet when they moved in, and they were only there a year, then charging them nearly the entire amount is fair,,if it was new when they moved in, and the lived there 3 years, then maybe half of the cost of new carpet.

I would not want to stand in front of a judge and say I charged a tenant for my new carpet because they caused stains in my several year old carpet,,,that would be asking to have my tail kicked, and I like to sleep well at night

My experience is they will use 75% of the lease amount toward that particular property, less PITI, if it has positive cash flow with only 75% of lease amount, it helps yoru DTI, if it is negative, it hurts it

After you have 2 years of that property being on your tax return they will use the information from your tax returns (since you now have a track record for expenses for the property)

I'm in Dallas, so a fairly similiar market, the houses I buy have an ARV of $105-120k, I am normally "all in" at about 75% (including rehab), rents range from $1125-$1250 (I charge at or below market rate so I can pick my tenants)

I buy with hard money, rehab the house, put a tenant in and then go to conventional financing, by doing this I end up with less than $10k in cash in any house,,my rehabs include a new AC, flooring, paint, appliances and anything else that might break anytime soon.

Doing it this way I have very few maintenance problems (my biggest problems are normally fences, I don't make a habit of replacing them, and with spring storms I normally have some problems.)

Wayne, start working on your credit, if you need to read a book or two on credit and credit scoring,, good credit is very important if your going to buy and hold,,if your flipping then you will need to have good enough credit for the hard money lenders, which still have requirements, but not nearly as stringent as traditioinal mortgages

you can't remove inquiries from Experian, on Trans Union you can by pulling your credit report through www.smartcredit.com repeatedly,,on equifax you can remove all hard inquiries except mortgage inquiries by pulling that report repeatedly.

I hope the credit people dont' read this board,,on another board you sort of have to speak in code about "bumping", which is what you are doing,,the credit bureaus only give so much space for inquiries on your report,,,if you load it up with "soft" inquiries (like pulling your own credit), you will drop them off,,,but it takes a couple of months to get results.

All 'soft' inquiries don't count,,you have to know which ones will,,but smartcredit works for TU and equifax itself works for equifax.

What ever you do, never make any reference to what your doing to the credit bureau,,don't call and ask "when are my inquiries going to drop off",,,you will only cause yourself massive problems,,they don't want anyone to know it exist

make sense?

I lost haof of my EM because someone broke into a house I had under contract and damaged the house,,,it clearly had not happened when the HUD inspection had occured, or when I put the house under contract,but I had to fight like heck to get half of my EM back,,,,forget HUD homes after that

that get people to come up with things that newby investors THINK will do a lot of work for them,,some might be ok, but most are just something for them to sell