All Forum Posts by: Ben S.

I have several rentals being rehabed right now, and am listing the first. All the homes are near military bases, and I work on one of them as well. Have you advertised specifically to military before? The top sites I have found are militarybyowner.com and ahrn.com, and the base housing site directs people to homes.mil (though it doesn't seem to be a very popular site). I've spread the word through military coworkers as well. Anything else I should try? ahrn.com is free, by militarybyowner is $50 for a listing, so not sure it's worth it. I plan to focus on the military community for a week or two first, and then up it up with Zillow/Craigslist.

Although i'm not a big fan of Tim Ferris, I really liked the concept of the 4 hour work week and having systems and place and being intentional and focused to limit your work time. I know it will vary more than some businesses as I could have something like two evictions hit at once or something, but planning to track my hours carefully and average out to one day per week over the course of the year (or less if possible). Hopefully in the next few years my younger brother will learn enough and take over management fully.

I know this will be hard to give a precise answer on, I'm just looking for rough estimates based on your experience.

So by the end of the year I will have 12 rentals, single family homes, located on two properties, one in Maryland, one in Virginia, each about 45 minutes from my home. All the homes will be recently rehabbed. I want to manage them myself, including managing tenants, doing maintenance and repairs (I have a lot of construction experience), and lawn care for one of the properties (with 10 houses on it). 

Part of the reason I am doing the repairs and lawn care is to have more face time with my tenants, and more importantly, to bring my younger siblings and children along to learn the business. 

I will be able to fully live off the income from these properties, and assuming managing these properties takes less than 40 hours per week, plan to spend the balance of my normal work week hours volunteering with a couple non-profits. 

Right now, I feel like I can knock out everything on an average of one full day per week (maybe a bit more in the beginning as I get my systems in place). In the summer it will be a bit more with the lawn care, and the winter a bit less. 

This sound reasonable? 

This is a big forum with lots of posts. Anyone can selectively see the posts they want that give an unrealistic perspective. If you take it as a whole, along with the podcast and blog and such, I don't think it creates anything unrealistic. 

As others have mentioned, there are a lot of newbies here, so someone has to be careful who they take advice from, and real estate is local, so one idea that works in one place may suck in another place. I think both of those are obvious to someone who really learns what they are doing, rather than cherry picking what they want to see.

Talk to at least two other banks and/or mortgage brokers. Compare rates and what they will and won't allow. Local bank or good mortgage broker will offer the most options.

I'm asking this question on behalf of my dad. Over the past decade he has bought up properties that make up about 2.5 acres in a single block. The surrounding area has low income residential, commercial, and light industry, and the properties he owns are zoned for all three. It has frontage on a fairly major roadway in town, and railroad on the back side. Right now there are several rental homes and a couple businesses run on these properties. This is in a mid size factory town in Ohio.

If he is interested in selling this as a block, how would he advertise it or who would he speak to, and how would he determine a reasonable sale price? I'm not really sure where to start with land value on a commercial/industrial property. He has spoken with some local brokers, but I'm not sure how much. Is that the main method of figuring this out? Or does that stay too local and it should be advertised more broadly?

So that abnormal thing about this is that I bought the property recently after a long forclosure and auction, and I have the names and contacts for most but not all the people, and I have no prior lease information. I've given all the current tenants (some of whom may be squatters for all I know) 60 days notice to vacate, as all the homes need work (there are 10 total). So the only info I have is that the lady who was there a couple weeks ago when I bought it called and told me she left and she went back a couple days later (before I could get up there to get her key) and a window was broken and it looked like someone had broken in. 

I ended up calling the sargent that met me there with the notices previously and he suggested I drive by and then call the police and say I believe someone broke into my home. 

The other abnormal thing about the neighborhood is these 10 houses are on 5 acres in the county, so it's not really a bad area (like in a city), but the tenants have been fairly hostile in the past, even to the county inspector last he went there (a couple years ago). So while it's a bad neighborhood at the moment, once everyone is gone and I fix everything up, I can get a fresh start and make the neighborhood whatever I want it to be.

Originally posted by @Patrick Philip:

Originally posted by @Ben S.:

What kind of experience do you have now in real estate investment? If little, then start with a small pot, say $100k - $200k depending on your market, and learn. Put in the rest in a few safe things investments until you are ready for bigger things.

 And do what with that $100-200k? I certainly wouldn't want to tie up all my cash.

Depends on what interests you. Flip a home, buy a rental unit or two and manage it yourself for a bit. It won't be as much for the money as it will education. Gradually build up as you go and move into small multi family units (4-12 maybe) which moves you to the commercial world a bit, hire a manager, learn more. Maybe you will start with the small stuff and realize you don't really like real estate, so don't do it, or maybe you will love it, so keep doing it. 

I'm sure there are other options that don't require this sort of thing, but I've gotten the good advice many times that you should invest in things you know. If I got $10 million tomorrow, I would invest about half in an apartment building and mobile home park and maybe something else (storage units) to diversify my real estate a bit, and the other half in munis/savings and a bit in gold/silver, but I have a decent amount of experience in SFH real estate and would want to use that money to move up to a more commercial level. I also have other business and invention ideas not related to real estate, so I would budget some amount of money that I could freely test out some other businesses (technology, again investing in something I know).

Regardless of what you do, spend less than you make from the muni/savings income, and if your other ventures fail for awhile, it won't hurt you long term. 

What kind of experience do you have now in real estate investment? If little, then start with a small pot, say $100k - $200k depending on your market, and learn. Put in the rest in a few safe things investments until you are ready for bigger things.

One of the people moved out of one of the homes on the property I recently purchased. The lady called and told me, and I planned to get the key from her and change locks a couple days later. She then called me a couple days later saying she had stopped by to check her mail and it looked like someone was living there. What should I do? I can get the key and go over there, but the neighborhood is a bit rough, and I'm not sure if I'll walk in on some unsavory people. Should I call the police? I'm going to talk to some neighbors, but I don't really trust any of them. Appreciate any advice.