All Forum Posts by: Calvin Thomas

As a person who owns a good amount of rentals, I would tell you NOT to inform anyone that you are the owner.  You should pretend to be another tenant and find a real estate agent or property manager to handle the issues with the other tenants.  Also, any of your important mail should be sent to a PO Box or UPS Store.

When things are fine, no worries.  If there is an issue or eviction, then there can be a problem.

I know of a few pretty large regionals, but aside from CBRE, I do not know of any national PM firms. I know the franchises from REAL Property Management and PMI; which from personal experience, were very poor one-man (or woman) shops. We manage our own, but I'd be weary of any franchise company in PM.

Depending on your appetite for risk, you can play with margin.  I will stress, this is risky and is not recommended; however, I've done it in the past.  The key is to find a brokerage who has low margin rates.  Interactive Brokers seems to be the lowest (https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/margin-rates.p...)  You are looking at around 5.4% as the blended rate.

You can then make cash offers in certain markets and avoid a mortage.  If you purchased a duplex in Columbus, OH for around $100k.  You'd be looking at margin costs of around $5400.00 a year or $450 a month.  You can then learn and get your feet wet without having to worry about the mortgage payment.  Hire Jimbo the blue (https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/jameswise) to manage and earn your strips.

You should be able to borrow via margin 80% with IB, however, I'd caution you on margin calls.  They are quick to sell positions to cover margin.  The margin interest, check with your CPA, may be tax deductible as well.

 Just PM'd you some recommendations.

 No chance in hell I'd let a tenant in, ESA or not with a Pitbull.  We had a time, many years ago, where a tenant's pitbull attached a maintenance tech.  The dog (and killed) was shot in self-defense.  They are very protective of their domain, and if you get one that is trained poorly, it will attack and do serious harm.  It is why many insurance carriers will allow these breeds on their policy.  Therefore, just stating, "I checked with my policy and insurance agent, unfortunately, your dog breed is not covered.  

In 40 + years of real estate, I've never seen a tenant sue due to this. Reason being, it's true.  Trust when I say, the owners know this.

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/homeowners-insurance/banned-d...

Interestingly enough, we have a tenant with two parrots as ESAs.  This law is getting to be ridiculous and needs to be modified.  What happens when someone has a fox as a ESA?  That's going to be allowed too?

 If your insurance carrier will not allow aggressive dogs, that is what you tell them.  The truth and it's completely 100% legal.  Most will not fight that.

They have their place.  I would say, it really depends on the state and city laws over the section 8 tenant.  We've inherited some of them over the years and it's a toss-up.  As with everything, really do a good job in checking their background and making sure they have the ability to pay the rent. You also have fair housing issues to be concerned about.  If you are in NYC, most of NJ or Philly, be very very careful on who you accept.  

I will go one further and if you are dealing with section 8 properties to NOT hire a real estate agent.  Hire either a reliable property management company (not a one person shop), or do the checks yourself.

A few years ago, we give this real estate agent a shot as a leasing agent for a converted building.  The final straw was when she was pushing (for fair housing) that a blind kid and his brother were qualified to rent an apartment on a three story walkup building in Newark.

She claimed that if we didn't accept them, it would be a fair housing violation.  She said she checked everything out and all is legit.  So I checked the two out and the older brother gave fake paystubs, his former house was fake (the address was to a NJ state prison), and the landlord was Veolia (water company).  His landlord's e-mail address was the customer service email address for Veolia.

Truly, you cannot make this sh!t up.  With over 40 years of experience, I can usually (sadly not always) sniff out bullsh!t; and this one stunk since I heard of it.  She was promptly fired as incompetent.

Section 8 is a different type of animal.  We have two in Stamford which are wonderful and usually take care of the place.  You just need to check very carefully as they have little options and will do what they feel is necessary in order to secure the home.  On their end, it looks like survival.  On our end, it's just money.