All Forum Posts by: Carl C.

@Karen Margrave  Right, it's a group of friends but they each have an individual lease that their parents co-sign. If needed one can be evicted without affecting the others. The problem with my system is that I have no one else to go after besides the tenant and their parents if they don't pay the rent. We tried assigning responsibility to all the tenants if one failed to pay but none of their parents would co-sign to that. So we compromised. One kid failed out of school before they took possession of the house (after they signed the lease) and his parents were good about paying even though he wasn't living there. They since found another student to take over the second semester. We get $625 per bedroom (4 bedrooms) in Poughkeepsie NY. 

@Karen Margrave  Thanks for the welcome! I rent to a group of friends. The school nearby has a pretty severe shortage of housing and they have a website for landlords to advertise their houses on. We were stunned by the number of calls we got about the house. These guys are juniors and they will be staying with us next year as well. One of them has a sister who is a freshman and her dad has said that as long as their are no troubles with the house he's likely to have her rent with us when his son moves out.

@Ryan Bergeron  I started thinking about this when i was a student as well. I did a little math about what we were paying and realized my landlord was getting way more than market rates by far. He owned several houses and worked for himself. It became a no-brainer. The trickiest thing for us (and this may be different in different markets) is the ability to get a property in the right neighborhood. When a decent house comes up, there are several investors who will snap the property up. Most investors where I am will not buy a house unless they can get 5 bedrooms out of it. We did the math and found that 4 bedrooms would give us acceptable cashflow. Keep in mind that we are 6 months into our first lease so issues that we have had will evolve but your number one problem should be finding the right tenants. When we were interviewing potential tenants there were some groups that gave me a very bad feeling. What kind of attitude do they walk in with. The group we went with was actually the second group to view the house (the first group had a friend back out and so they couldn't sign the leases). They were extremely polite and we had a good feeling about the parents (who are all co-signers) when we spoke with them. We did as much research on them as we could find (thank you google). Rent gets paid on time every month and problems have been relatively minor. The biggest problem is this is the first time any of these guys have lived on their own. They just don't know anything because their parents or the school took care of everything in the past. They don't know that a running toilet is a problem. They aren't great about putting the garbage out. They didn't know when sewage backed up in the basement. The house is just generally messy (not surprising). The neighbors called me one day and said they had a lot of people over and someone parked on their lawn. It's a lot of hand holding and teaching the guys what's acceptable and what isn't. Still totally worth it so far, that's why we are looking for our next place.

Thanks for the heads up @Karen Margrave. Leave it to the newbie to post in the wrong forum!

I have a college rental and I have found that it takes a little more hand holding for the students than I expected. @Colleen F. is right that you need to make sure they know how and when to put out garbage (instead of piling it in the basement, in my case) and make sure you are clear about parties. My tenants are nice guys but they are just kind of dumb. Toilet was running one time when I stopped by and they didn't realize it was a problem. Sewer backed up in the basement and they didn't realize. Parent's are way more involved than they ever were when I was in school. I didn't expect to hear from them at all but they don't hesitate to email or call me for little things.  

Since I see such detailed posts on deal I thought I'd share my first. My partner and I bought a 4 bedroom SFH in October 2013 for $145,000 with conventional financing, 25% down. It was a FSBO deal from the estate of the former owner. Unfortunately the former owner was the type who thought he could fix everything himself and it is clear that he really didn't know what he was doing. We put about $25k into rehab including a new roof, electrical work, plumbing work, retaining wall repairs, and gutting the second floor down to the studs to reframe some walls. I have a background in home repairs and contracting so I was able to do a lot of the work myself but bills still add up. That said, we had a good idea about what we were getting into.

We wanted to rent to students in the area so getting it rented took some time because we needed to align with the semesters. We rented the house for $2,500 per month and our monthly PITI is right around $1,400. For now we are paying everything out of pocket and setting aside all rent income for the next down payment. It's amazing how quickly that can add up but until I figure out some creative financing I need every penny I can get.

Owning the house has certainly been a learning experience and a lot of work. What is great is that I love it. This doesn't feel like work for me even when I'm trudging up there to snake a drain. Now I'm on the look out for deal number 2!

• Buy and hold my second rental property
• Continue studying to understand how I can expand my business 
• Continue saving for my third rental property
• Find a group of NY investors to build a network with

Great work, congratulations!

Oh and @Paul Timmins thanks for the great advice!

Wow, thanks for the great welcome! @Bob C. we are looking for our next house in Poughkeepsie near Marist, same as our current place. @Joe Fairless I'd love to join you guys for meet up if I'm invited. I'm looking forward to meeting as many folks as I can!

Hi Everyone, I am a recent first time real estate investor with a partner. Last year we purchased a SFH in the Hudson Valley and now rent it out to college kids (possibly crazy but exactly what we wanted). We did a ton of research before making our purchase but of course we are learning a lot as we go. So far I love it and we are hoping to buy another one in the next few months. I hope to make this my full time job at some point. Bigger pockets was a great resource and now that I'm actually in the game I'm finding it an even better resource. Hope to learn a lot more so I can get to my goal of working for myself soon!