All Forum Posts by: Brent Kiger

Good afternoon,

I'm looking for a property manager in Kansas City that manages Section 8 housing. Does anyone have any experience with a manager who handles these properties?

Good afternoon BP Community -

I'm a real estate investor in Kansas City, Missouri and currently have a portfolio of long-term rentals. Due to the lack of cash flowing deals, I'm heading to the Ozarks this weekend to look at adding a short term rental to my portfolio. Just curious if the current STR investors at the Ozarks are doing well with the strategy, are having any issues renting their houses, or any other issue that I'm not aware of.

In estimating the gross revenue, it appears a 3 or 4 bedroom house will bring in around $400/night, but of course it won't be rented every night. I'm just a little more hesitant because I know long term rentals so much better and know what units rent for. 

Overall, mainly just trying to see if investors are having an overall good/profitable experience at the Ozarks. Would love to hear any insight, and if I can help in any way with anything in KC, I'm always happy to help!

Looking forward to the discussion!

@Joseph Tamara Welcome to BP Joseph! You've found the right spot to get your real estate investing journey off to the right start. I'm a local Kansas City resident and Investor, and have learned everything I know about real estate from this site and the podcast @Brandon Turner. 

Have you come any across any deals yet, or at least areas to focus on? I'd be happy to chat sometime if you're interested. Feel free to reach out anytime.

Best of luck and welcome to BP!

@Jim Piety This is just my personal strategy and philosophy, as I'm like you, and always prefer to BRRRR. However I have done a little flipping recently with the market conditions, however I still stick by I won't entertain a flip, unless I can turn it into a rental and have it be a least an OK BRRRR deal. May not be a great one, and I may still leave some money in the deal, but that's not a deal breaker for me. In this market full of economic volatility, I think the need for multiple exit strategies has never been more important.

In other words, I'm staying away from high-end flips, just because I don't know how much to trust the market. I stick to lower end flips, that if I can't get the sales price I need to sell, I could rent it and at least add it to my portfolio and have it be close to a 1% deal. Having that additional exit strategy makes doing the flip a lot less stressful, when you know it would at least be an OK BRRRR.

Not sure if that helps at all, but that's my thoughts in these crazy times.

@Stian Jones So the first duplex I ever bought, I realized one of the tenants was Section 8 after we were under contract, and close to closing. I was upset that it wasn't disclosed, or more like that I didn't figure it out on my own through my own due diligence. The truth is, I had no experience in being a landlord and assumed the worst when it comes to Section 8. I closed on the property and she is with me six years later and is one of my best tenants. Especially with the COVID shutdowns, having some section 8 tenants has been a good hedge against more traditional renters that have stopped paying and/or lost their jobs. I now currently seek out more Section 8 tenants.

So short answer, my opinion is that section 8 is neither good or bad, it just is. Definitely not a reason for me to run from a deal, and frankly quite the opposite. That has been my experience at least. 

@Jobee Vincent Buenaventura Congrats on the purchase. I'm in a different market than you are, but I know my bankers here will only go 75% LTV on a refi. Unless there is room to continue to upgrade the property and push that appraisal up even more, but obviously you want to be careful about putting more cash into it, without being relatively certain it will appraise accordingly. Obviously use your best judgment if you decide to rehab further, but to me, that sounds like the only real option if you want to pull more out, is just to try to make it appraise higher. Sounds like a pretty solid buy and hold long term deal though.

Good morning,

I recently hired an overseas virtual assistant in the Philippines to help manage my rental properties. So far everything is going really well, and its time for me to get her a US based phone number so she can more easily communicate with my vendors and tenants. I use Google Voice for my business number but it appears that service is not available in the Philippines.

I'm curious if anyone in the community has any ideas/strategies that you've done to allow overseas VA's communicate with US based tenants and vendors.

Thanks,

Brent

I am preparing to hire a virtual assistant in the next week or two. I have set up my job description and will be conducting interviews shortly.

My question is for anyone that has used VA's for property management/maintenance coordination. Of course it depends on the quality of the VA, just like any employee, but I'm curious to other investors overall experience with VA's, on whether it has been a positive experience or not. I'm looking for someone really to help with tenant relations and to manage maintence work with tenants and contractors more than anything. I'd like to train them to look for off market deals in their down time, but mainly just want them to focus on daily operations.

Anyways, just curious to the community's high level thougths here.

Thanks,

Brent 

@Nick M. So yes, tenants can make a maintenance request online, phone or text. Most of mine seem to like the text option. Currently I use Buildium, and Buildium and Latchel do not talk to each other, as of August of 2020. Would love for those to somehow communicate, and I've brought that up to Buildium as my user feedback. They are very good at follow up and request that vendors take before and after pictures that get uploaded to Latchel to show the work has been completed. 

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions.

Brent

@Nick M. @Alexander Sutton @Cliff H. @Jeff Galak 

Just updating the forum post. So I have been using Latchel for 20 of my units now for about a year. I have used the full service at $10/mo/unit and most currently their 24/7 emergency service for $1/mo.

I was honestly a little skeptical at first, but the sales person did a really good job explaining their service, and I have been extremely impressed with the service they provide. I have needed them to find any of their own vendors yet, as I uploaded my preferred vendor list. So I can't speak to how their Latchel network of contractors work. However, I would strongly recommend their service. They are very tech savvy and very progressive in how they operate. 

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, but I love the service.