All Forum Posts by: Casey Powers

@Elizabeth Schartman If the criminal record says “claims unsubstantiated” it's little more than hearsay, and we cannot decline for that. Also it didn't even show up on a normal background check, because it wasn't a conviction. Sometimes tenants go bad. This is always a risk and it doesn’t mean your PM is to blame. Your PM did not cause this and none of this indicates they failed in their duty.

It's SO easy for people to sit around online, armchair quarter-backing and place blame after the fact. The bottom line is, the tenant caused a little damage as will happen sometimes. If you're new to rentals it's a bigger shock to you. But as @Bill B. pointed out, this is just part of the business sometimes. This is small potatoes.

The Surfside example is extremely rare. The real problem with condos is every plumbing issue becomes a Problem. If your unit is upstairs and you have a leak, it damages the unit below costing you a lot more for repairs. If your unit is downstairs and the unit above leaks, it damages your unit and you have to make the upstairs owner pay for the repairs, which definitely is NOT always easy. Sometimes it’s difficult to get hold of them for days or even weeks, meanwhile the problem gets worse or you have to take matters into your own hands.

The other problem with condos is WHEN the neighbors cause problems you’ll have your tenant whining about the noise, smoke seeping through their unit, etc. There’s nothing you can do about the neighbor issues, and one bad neighbor in a condo will have your good tenants wanting to leave instead of renew a lease. That gets costly.

I’m not a fan of condos for rentals. Houses or townhouses with no up-down neighbors are much better.

Zillow isn't filtering out owner reviews. Good Yelp reviews is not a red flag.

We accept it because we know we don't have a real choice. Some use it but for leadgen most of those are paying way too much for Zillow to essentially sell their own leads back to them. heh

Agree except realtors haven't fought Zillow hard AT ALL. The local boards are controlled by reps of large brokerages who have been quick to get into bed with Zillow and sell out the association. Just like Congress, NAR "leaders" don't represent the interests of the people they claim to represent - they represent the big money interests, in this case Zillow. The LVR president has always been from Big Brokerage with thousands of agents to vote for "their guy". "Their guy" then makes decisions for the entire association based on what Big Brokerage wants. So far that has been giving basically everything to Zillow.

Absolutely, smaller real estate investors are going to get ditched just like realtors, as big money takes over housing. 

 LOL!!!! 

Of course sellers will go for the bigger payout. Point I’m making is these companies are overpaying for houses and there has to be more to it than just “flipping in volume”. 1) Typical bigcorp strategy has been operate at a loss to gain enough market share to control it. 2) Overpaying for property cuts most other brokerages out of the deal, essentially undercutting Zillow’s competition as a real estate broker. Industry busting. 3) With lending too, Zillow can position itself as the only place most people may go for anything real estate related. That gives enormous control over the housing market. 

This does NOT bode well longer term for consumers or even many other investors IMO.

1029 Appaloosa Hills, North Las Vegas. Highest exact model match sold comp in that neighborhood was $292k in June and the next highest was $290k. Zillow bought it for $324k with $1500 repair credit + closing costs and Zillow fees —> net $304k to seller, closed first week of August. Of course they put on the public record they paid $308k. Ha

Right after sale and cleanup, Zillow listed it for $311k. Progress Residential bought it for $321k and now has it listed for rent at $1995. Highest rental comps in that neighborhood were about $1600. I have watched Progress Residential consistently rent homes for $200-300 above neighborhood leased comps. How they do it: they pretty it up a lil bit and don’t screen renters. According to someone I know who’s currently renting from them, they only wanted to see a most recent bank statement, no credit check. 

This is just one example. Zillow and Opendoor have been consistently overpaying for a while now. And the bigcorp rental owners have been significantly overcharging on rents for a while too, at least for 2 years since I’ve been watching them. 

In my market they've been paying $30k+ over the highest sold comps in the neighborhood, so that sellers would NET several thousand above the next highest sold comp for a model match house in the exact same complex. That's not a flipping business. More like a race to buy enough property to get a monopoly on the real estate market. Isn't that the SOP for every bigcorp? Operate at a loss until they own enough of a market to take control of it. What other purpose would they have for buying so much and overpaying so much? I assume if they are pausing, it's not because "flipping isn't working out". There has to be some other explanation.

Telling you that you don't understand the market plus not wanting to send your offers = blowing you off. You clearly didn't like their responses, as shown by your longwinded posts here discussing it. Now instead of taking the feedback you're just dismissing anyone who attempts to directly explain it to you. Sorry if you can't handle it.

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Even if they view it as lowball, attach my spreadsheet to the offer and show them their property is way overpriced without directly telling them that and maybe they'll come to their senses. Me thinking the realtors would respect math also and see that I'm correct, I've had 2 realtors tell me "you're just not in tune with the Phoenix market." At this point, I will ask them politely to explain what this statement means because my math shows this deal is a terrible deal. They didn't respond.

So, you went in with arrogance trying to show them how you believe their pricing was wrong and you're "correct". You showed them all they needed to know - you don't know their market, you don't know how residential pricing works, and you think you know better than them. When you asked for a further explanation they didn't respond because they knew they wouldn't get anywhere. And you want to insult my "communication skills". LOL