All Forum Posts by: Ron Averill

The East Lansing rental market is not for the faint of heart or for the ill-informed. Most investors who have a bad experience here get surprised by rules they should have known ahead of time.

But once you learn all the rules concerning East Lansing rentals, you may conclude that they are not really that bad. The rules exist mostly to protect the neighborhoods and the renters. This keeps property values and rents high, which is good for investors.

I own several rentals and also do a few flips each year in East Lansing. Let me know if I can help.

@Becky Ben What was the bad experience you had when posting the address of your rental property? I have been posting the address of my rental properties on Craigslist ads, etc with no problems so far. Please advise me on the dangers of this. Thanks. 

I read as much as I can, like you do. But I have found that I learn much more pertinent information when I talk to people in the business -- investors, realtors, potential renters, local housing commissioners, etc. Almost all of this is done in the context of doing deals or renting my units. There is simply no substitute for unfiltered real time data from the people who are causing the trends. By the time you read about it, it's probably old news. 

@Renee R. In these situations, I make all adult tenants sign the lease. Further, the lease says that all tenants on the lease are jointly and severally liable for meeting all terms of the lease agreement.

Joint and Several Liability means that each person who signs the Rental Agreement agrees to be liable for his or her individual share of liability and, in addition, agrees to be liable for the liability of all other persons who sign the Rental Agreement. This pertains to rental payments and damages, among other terms. 

This helps to cover you in the event of one person moving out, and it creates a lot of peer pressure for one tenant to not walk out on the others.

We own rental homes in a college town, where many of our homes are rented by multiple singles, and not all students. We have only had small issues related to this, and I think the lease terms and choosing good tenants have a lot to do with it.

@Steven Myers  Thank you for confirming my suspicion and increasing my frustration.

@Mark Gallagher  I agree. In fact, I'm thinking this might be a really good business opportunity. If I can deliver countertops in one week while everyone else is taking over one month, I should be able to steal lots of business.

We started as pure buy/hold investors. Recently the market conditions have not been good for purchasing additional buy/hold properties, but we are finding quite a few good flip opportunities. So we just started our first flip project this week. This will keep our contractors fed while (hopefully) making a little bit of cash. But our main strategy remains buy/hold for generating passive income over the long term.

@Steve Babiak and @Mark Gallagher  Thank you for your responses, which are exactly what I thought you would say. It seems completely unreasonable to wait 4-6 weeks for countertops, yet this is what all the sources are telling me. My GC has also made lots of calls and he gets the same response, even from the places he has worked with for many years. I'm living in the twilight zone.

During the past year my team has developed a really good process for rehabs. EXCEPT that it takes 4-6 weeks minimum to get our countertops measured, manufactured and installed. This is the case for laminate, granite and quartz. We have talked to many suppliers already, and we get the same timing estimate from all of them. I've even offered to pay a premium for faster turnaround, but no takers so far.

I would be most grateful if some of the more experienced rehabbers and flippers would share their secrets and sources for getting countertops more quickly.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to make that first offer.  To get over that fear, you might try making one or more very low offers. Not embarrisingly low, but low enough that the offer will probably be either rejected or countered. Now you are one step closer to being in the game. And if your offer does get accepted, you might have a great first deal.