All Forum Posts by: Deborah Burian

Welcome to Bigger Pockets and good luck. The Denver metro is certainly booming right now.

The 50% rule is a rule of thumb. I would never use it to make a final decision. Based on the rule of thumb, this project is worth further analysis. We do shoot for $100 a door but I want to be much more granular on the expenses, are you paying utilities, etc.

You can start by searching Craigslist for similar properties. If you are intimately familiar with your area, you will learn a great deal from there and from similar advertising sites. If you don't know the area as well, you need to do some driving... For instance, choose a few homes that seem similar and go have a look. Zillow gives rent "zestimates" but they are ballpark at best and can be pretty awful.

Punked again. :-( Someone gets me almost every April Fools... I guess the shoe fits.

Sam W., I had used Quicken previously and found Quickbooks a very intuitive and easy to learn.

Quickbooks. We're 10 years in and several iterations of QB into our record keeping. Computer stolen last year, no problem still have the QB backup... and 10 years of data. As previously mentioned, you can create classes for properties and get very detailed info by house, by category, whatever you want to look at.

Bill Gulley, I went to the page and there are many proposed regs, to which proposed regulation are you referring?

Joel Owens and Jeff Greenberg, thanks for the follow up info.

Got the idea from the forums here... pretty good long term tenant gave appropriate notice. I told him it was his house & he'd paid the rent but if he'd made other living arrangements I'd be happy to rebate the few remaining days of rent paid for the chance to prep the house for the next tenant. He jumped at the chance plus was very cooperative with me showing the prop to new candidates. Consequently, I was able to rent to a high quality candidate before he moved out, got in, getting the work done, they are on an April 1 lease. At an almost 30% rent increase. Learn something new every day.

What a wonderful story. Sounds like your first year was both educational and productive. Congratulations.