All Forum Posts by: Maureen Campbell

Hi all, 

Does anyone have a good hack for finding all of the small multi-family (2-4 unit) homes in a particular neighborhood/zip using the Philadelphia  public websites? If not, do you purchase lists off of listsource.con or some other website? 

Thanks, 

Maureen 

@Yuriy Skripnichenko and @Lana Lee Do either of you know anyone who has rented out rooms in their primary residence (i.e. a roommate) while they continue to live there? I have a 4 bedroom house and I am only using one, so I wanted to rent out one or two of the others while my husband is stationed overseas for 9 months.  I tried calling 311 to figure out what I would need to do in this situation.

First the guy told me I would need to rezone my house to a duplex. This makes no sense, since my home is a single family and does not have a separate entrance.

The next thing he told me was that I would need to create a company, lease the house to myself and put the other roommates on that lease in order to charge them rent. This also seems to make no sense, because I would be both the lessee and lessor on the document. I am sure that most people just put it on Craigslist and call it a day. I just want to make sure that I am reporting the income on my taxes properly.

Thanks so much! Great resource! 

Good morning,

I was wondering if anyone knows of any specific rules in Philly for rentals. I am planning to rent out a spare room or two in my house and wanted to see if there were any specific clauses that I might need to include in a lease. I was planning to use the BP state specific lease, but know from prior rentals that sometimes cities can be more restrictive. Any suggestions for rules, resources or websites would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, 

Maureen  

Good morning,

We have been AirBNB-ing a vacation rental at the shore for about 2.5 years now and are looking to expand into other regions. We are thinking about the Poconos for our next opportunity. We are buy and hold investors that focus on the vacation rental market at the moment. We are looking for a property may need cosmetic improvements, but won't require a major renovation right off the bat.

I am looking for any recommendations for investor friendly real estate agents in the Poconos region. We want someone who is willing to look for rental potential and give us the inside scoop on which neighborhoods are more or less rental friendly, can give pros and cons on amenities, and is familiar with the fees for various communities.

We will also be looking for a lender that is familiar with the vacation rental real estate and qualifying income. We have two years of tax returns with our rental income, so hopefully that should help; however, many lenders still want long-term leases to qualify income. Our lender for our first property in NJ was great, but isn't licensed for PA. Are there any local banks in the region you all have worked with in the past and recommend?

Finally, we will be looking for some sort of vacation-rental management. We have relatively good systems for check in, cleaning, etc. but we need someone that can do occasional house checks, meet contractors if necessary, and respond to specific issues. If anyone knows of management companies that specialize in this type of vacation rental niche, please pass them along.

Thanks in advance,

Maureen

Thanks for the replies. We were already paying roughly $1100 annually for the home with incorrect information. We have USAA and have had great experiences with them for many years, but this rate increase (if my husband had the numbers correct) would triple that. We do have a brick home, but the façade is the only exterior brick. The back and side wall are stucco.

We are going to have an insurance inspector come out to see if they still come up with the same number, but if the rate jumps a couple hundred dollars we will definitely look at switching insurers. We were looking for a company to do our umbrella policy through as well, so I appreciate the recommendations @Account Closed

We were just on the phone with our insurance company and discovered that they had many of the property characteristics wrong on a house that we own. The result is that we will likely need to pay a few extra hundred dollars per month due to the errors they had in their system.

My question is, what is a reasonable rebuild cost for a single family row home in Philadelphia with mid-grade finishes? The square footage is 2,565 but it is a pretty standard 3 story brick row home from the 1930's with an attached wall on one side and an alley on the other. I don't want to be under-insured, but their initial estimate was $750k to rebuild which seems extremely high to me, since that shouldn't include the land value.

We have another property in NJ, about an hour away that is about 500sqft smaller, but with additional exterior decks and a pitched roof with a rebuild cost estimated closer to $350K.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

I just had a house treated for termites - relatively small area and it was around $900. They did have to drill holes since it was inaccessible. Termites have been the bane of our existence recently with multiple deals falling apart due to termite issues that were out of our hands due to financing. 

I was very interested in attending this, but the weather doesn't seem like it will cooperate. Is there an alternate date if it gets snowed out?

Thanks for organizing. I will try to make it down.