All Forum Posts by: David Arney

getting parents to co-sign a lease for college kids is a must have, IMO.

yeah they do, and the number is 4. It's not the easiest thing to enforce, and hard to tell sometimes even if an inspector did come over. There are always friends, boy/girlfriends, parents, relatives dropping by, multiple cars in the parking lot.

A place i know in particular (my gf lives there) was recently called in by a nosy neighbor for violating the tenant policy. A guy showed up and inspected and found nothing, because there were no violations, just a lot of cars in the driveway.

The laws used to be to prevent brothels from coming into towns, but they have since been used to prevent large living places like fraternities from popping up in quiet neighborhoods. Not to mention this rule applies to many families that many have as many as 10 or 15 people in a 3BR/2BA home. Very illegal.

The landlord informs the tenants of the law upon the signing of the lease. Many times it's stated in the lease as a reminder. It makes it pointless to have something like a 6BR house in a neighborhood that allows only 4 people living there. You have to get special zoning rights, which can be difficult.

nobody cares about durham.

In the Raleigh area I can't imagine being a landlord around the NC State area and NOT making money. The homes are barely kept up, and yet the rent is higher than anywhere else. I'm seeing homes $1500-$1600 month for a 4BR 2BA 1yr lease, one bathroom in horrible shape, never is painted, AC units broken and not fixed, and one of the bedrooms is actually a former dining room connected to a living room, just enclosed with a big piece of drywall, no priming/sanding necessary. Huge bolts are just sticking out of the corners. Have to mow the lawn, no mower included, no utilities included, Parents have to cosign, etc. It's nuts how little they put into the home, yet how much they pull out in $$.

I've been thinking if I were to own rental property around here, close to campus would be the ideal way to go.

I can't believe nobody has started talking about this yet.

Who's winning in their brackets? I'm certainly not

go UNC!!

little blunt PNW but I see where you are coming from. And I have to disagree with you on a lot of those points.

Offering a business deal and then having it not go through is NOT a waste of time, in my opinion. It's too bad that it didn't work out, but if you think every 'no' is a waste of time and shouldn't have been bothered with, then it will be very hard to try and make the first sale.

Also, I never called them and angrily said anything. I was annoyed for a moment because I was in a hurry to lock down a place, but I'm very professional and I wouldn't call someone acting belligerent like that. I still think it was unprofessional on their part to not have called me back like they promised they would.

Also, the previous price was in my budget, but the new price I was unwilling to pay. I tried to cut a deal with them. You may see it as I offered them a deal $250 lower/month, I see it as they raised the rates $250 higher a month and I thought it was ridiculous.

I'm not a poor money manager. I was actually trying to make my money work for me. In the end I got a much better townhome and a much better deal. The owners also are local and take care of management themselves. I think I will be getting along just fine.

Friend of mine read a few books and got really into real estate investing and wanted to flip a home. I naturally stayed close contact with him to see how things were going, then I drove to where he lived (4 hours away) to actually have a look at things, mainly b/c he wanted me to lend him the money to fix up a place.

He got a home for $30k, comps in the area were going for 80k, he said, and he made the deal as quickly as possible because his whole mentality was getting things as done as fast as lightning. I was worried he wasn't thinking about unexpected setbacks, dealing with contractors, and also, how to balance money vs. time. His loan on the house obv wasn't large, so I was afraid he would wind up spending thousands on contractors to try and get things done in a few weeks when he could take his time a little with fewer contractors and just pay out a few hundred in mortgage payments and save himself some money, i.e. make himself some money. Well I told him let's see how he does on his first home and if he does ok and learns a lot, i'll jump in on the next project.

Few weeks go by and the guy won't return my calls, won't contact me about the home or anything. I'm not stupid and started to guess maybe he was in over his head and was too embarrased to tell me he was making a lot of mistakes. Yep.

Nothing was going the way he wanted it too, starting from day 1. 3hrs before closing the lender tells him to double down on payment because he was risky. Well that cuts out cash he could have used fixing up the home. He already borrowed the max he could from the bank, given his credit (not good). The contractor didnt' do what he wanted him to do, I still don't even know exactly what went on, whether he was going slow or did poor work or what, but my friend said he physically threatened the contractor, and the guy walked out on him after that. So there he was, with a POS home and nobody willing to do the work for him and out of money to do anything anyways.

He ended up selling the home to another investor. I have no clue how much he lost on the home, but he certainly learned a lot, for instance he has no patience dealing with people.

He has since vowed not to return to real estate. I told him I'd be here when he wants to come back. Poor guy

you are exactly right about corn prices, we are already seeing it because of the ethanol demand

You have essentially opened up an entirely new consumer market with ethanol, a whole new demand that is causing high corn prices. Even soybeans are high in demand. Also, food is in high demand as well, and they are competing consumers. Last time I checked, futures through december 09 show corn prices staying high too. My dad expects this trend to last for a few more years, maybe 5 or 6, before people start to change things. I imagine at some point the government is going to stop the CRP thing and people who are getting paid NOT to farm their lands will begin to farm again. The new supply will curb prices some. Many of those farmlands on that program, though, are not flat, and there is some concern over possible erosion, even if you terrace everything out. who knows.

but yeah, i don't hunt at all, so i probably don't know where the best places to find deer are, I just go by what I hear. Right now, I don't believe that's an option just because my grandma would have a fit if she saw an cute furry animal get shot on our land.

:lol: yea me too

I would love to move to hawaii and start a REI career there!

yeah, but the best hunting grounds are usually wooded areas not suitable for growing corn, and renting out land for corn growth will yield a higher $/acre than hunting land or dairy pasture for the simple fact that growing the crops has the highest potential return than any other use for the land.

If we were closer to a major city, I would consider developing on the land, but here it is -EV.

also, i'm not the sole decision maker for our lands, and I don't think others in my family would be very happy allowing people to hunt on our property at all. I was driving around some of our land yesterday and got stuck in the mud. I had to call my dad to come get me out. Wasn't stuck too bad, he was able to wiggle it out. Afterwards, I asked him why we didn't lay gravel down that road. He said it was because he didn't want people driving through it. When you get strangers coming through, they tend to either go mudding and tear up the road a bunch, or they steal stuff. Either way is a hassle to deal with