All Forum Posts by: Esther S

Does anyone know (or have a rule of thumb) of the cost differential of closing cost between a cash buyer and a mortgage buyer for a personal residence?

My husband and I are disagreeing about subleasing our apartment for the summer (we have the permission of our landlord). He's concerned about bad subtenants. I'm not talking about the extreme case, but was wondering about the average cost of damage caused by the average bad tenant. Does anyone have any figures?

Vish, we finally went with John Stiles with Urban Enterprises http://urbanrent.com.

I'm not in your league yet, but I'm taking baby steps! Does any of you have realtors serving the West Chester area you would recommend? I'm considering purchasing a 2-bedroom condo to live in, then rent out down the road.

My husband and I currently have a house in MN that has been rented out for 2 years and is taken care of by a good property management company. We intend to keep this house as a rental.

We moved to PA 2 years ago and have been renting a 1-bedroom apartment. We're wondering whether it'd be a good idea to just spend what we've been spending in rent and purchasing a 2-bedroom condo instead with the idea that we'd make it a rental when we want to move up in house or move away.

Is this a good idea? What am I currently not thinking of that I should take into consideration to make this decision? Thanks so much!

Just an update. We've decided to ask our tenants to put their satellite dish on a pole that they'll pay for themselves. They tell me that Century Link will use the existing cable on the unused existing dish on the roof so there won't be any drilling, fortunately. We decided to have the dish installed on a pole so that future tenants won't have to mess with the roof if satellite dishes are requested.

Can you recommend a GOOD real estate agent in the Philadelphia area (western suburbs) who is familiar with investment properties?

I'm still in the dreaming stage but are toying with the idea of purchasing a duplex when we're ready to purchase a house in our new location. We currently have a house in MN that we're renting out. We anticipate that once we're stable here, we would sell our house in MN (which could be years down the road) and purchase a duplex. Is this a sound decision? Where could we find duplexes? Realtor.com appears to cater only to SFRs.

Our tenants want to have satellite TV and have asked if they can have a satellite dish installed through Century Link on our SFR at our tenants' expense. When we bought our SFR, there was already a satellite dish on the roof.

Is this something we shouldn't have problems with?

Would you purchase townhomes with their home association fees and rental restrictions? Or would you stick solely to single family residences? I'm asking because townhomes are cheaper than single families.