All Forum Posts by: Brian Volland

I'm looking for recommendations for a quality home inspector that is experienced in 4-unit buildings that services the Glendale area. Please include any details that you think makes your recommendation stand out. Thank you in advance.

The short answer on "What is a second tier VA loan?" is that if the house purchased in NC was less than ~$417,000 then you may have some benefit remaining to be used under special circumstances. In your case, your PCS should meet the requirements to be able to use a second tier (i.e. your remaining benefit). The remaining benefit depends entirely on the purchase cost of the first home.

A short example: You bought your first house for $117,000. You should have approx. $273,000 remaining benefit. The catch is that they impose a minimum purchase amount of $144,000. You can contact the VA directly and they can tell you exactly what you have remaining.

Lastly, just as a reminder, you can go over your benefit limit. There is no "limit" to VA loan purchases, they just insure up to a certain amount and $0 down. If you exceed the amount the VA will insure, and assuming that your lender is okay with that, you will have to pay a down payment on the excess amount.

Just for curiosity's sake, do you not have enough VA loan entitlement left to consider a second tier VA loan?

@Sarah Kartsher If you keep a close eye on the MLS they pop up occasionally. It depends on how much cash flow you're looking for. I've also noticed a decent number of listings w/ upside potential that could make a property worth looking in to.

It seems like rehab to cash flow and off-market is the name of the game for now.

My first thought is that I don't see property management fees accounted for. Regardless of whether or not you are self-managing, you always want to account for PM in the event you are either unable to or simply don't want to manage the property anymore. 

My second thought is that, depending on your cash reserves, you may want to put more away for either your repair fund or CapEx depending on how old your CapEx items are. You're planning for the both the known and unknown future. So whereas an SF home may have mold or holes or whatever, MF means shared walls which could impact two units.

I also noticed that you are in FL. Do you need separate hurricane/flood insurance? Factor in pest control as well as FL is well known for termites and ants.

@Account Closed , thank you for the advice, I'll check them out for sure; especially with a recommendation from two investors. 

Congrats! Sometimes you win, and something you WIN.

Thank you all again. Your responses have been very helpful.

Thank you all for the responses. I will, of course, find a lawyer with rental experience to go through everything (still building the team) but I do really like the idea of having a new tenant packet. The only issue I'd like clarification on there @Deanna McCormick is revision of any addendum. Since you are referencing addendums in the lease you make it easier to change just the addendum without making a new lease. I'm just imagining that when you need to add a new rule/policy after the tenant has signed, you can modify just the addendum and give notice of the change to tenants. In Arizona, tenants must be given 30 days to comply with any changes to policies and/or rules. So how do you show, legally speaking, the date of notification to the tenant and date of implementation? A separate signed letter of notification from the tenant? 

The short answer to your question is that our additions to a standard lease are more specific than what you tend to find in a standard lease. Many of them have come straight from here after seeing someone else with an issue that could be relevant to our area. Keep in mind, these are not rules for a SFR but for MFR, so some things are just rules of courtesy. Our current rules detail things such as inoperable vehicles, trailers, quiet hours, smoking policy to cover vaping and marijuana usage, exception to subletting in extreme circumstance, waterbeds. I've had one that i've been iffy on adding but it seems a fairly good catch-all: No swearing. No I don't intend to enforce no swearing if it's just in casual conversations. It's more to keep folks from just yelling at each other across the property. I have to assume there may be children in at least one of the units. Thoughts?