All Forum Posts by: Charlie Price

Allison Nguyen Welcome to Bigger Pockets and Congrats on your investment property. Many have been mentioned here and are free. Zillow, Craigslist are two main ones that I have used many many times with great success. There are dozens more. Are you anywhere near any military installation? If so Military By Owner is great for that. Also, you can do a rental scar arch on google and see what websites come me up. Try posting on 4-5 of the top ones that you like. Another idea is to higher a professional photographer to take some good pictures. !it may cost you $100 but you can re use them and may help you rent your home faster. You may be surprised how much this helps. You can normally find a decent one on Craigs List “Gigs” section. Now is prime renting/buying season. Check your near by computation and try to be slightly lower. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Ian Dikhtiar type the “@“ symbol and the he first letter of the person’s name. If they are in the thread they should appear. Click on the name and you have it. Good job on studying up on real estate investing and wanting to invest at such a young age. It seems like you have a very good living situation at the moment. You may want to let that situation ride for a bit and save up that $2K per month for some more time for reserves and renovations on your first investment. Keep your eyes open and see if you can possibly find a 2 or 3 unit property in the next 12 months or that you can do a little upgrading to Ao that you can raise rents and live in one of the units. Maybe your mom can partner with you and help out with the owner occupied down payment portion part. You can have your saved up funds for your renovations/upgrades and unforeseen costs that you will most likely run into. Find yourself a good realtor and. Good mortgage broker that can give you good advice and guide you through your first purchase. Good luck and let us know what you do.

What Jay said. :-).

I agree with most all the other posts...Spend the $$ if you can and let the management company try to get better tenants in there.  It sucks when there are that many at one time..On the bright side, at least it is spring/summer time and a good time to be renting units.  I took a run down drug infested 23 unit property and added 7 units and changed the renters to a totally new property that stays at or near 100% full now!  Good luck and let us know how it goes.

@Account Closed property.  If if the place is in the middle of no where, then it would be tough to make much money on it.  However, I was told many of the same exact things before I purchased my property 5 years or so ago.  Before I purchased the property It was previously a drug infested run down motel that nobody wanted.  I had no experience running an extended stay business.  Many investors passed on this property as the bank foreclosed on it, kicked all the tenants out and let it sit vacant and boarded up for a another year or so.  I could also be completely wrong.  We have no idea of the area Crystal is in.  But if it is just 15 miles from a medium-sized college it may not be too far out in the sticks.  If it is true that there are 3 star hotels in the area charging $78 a night and staying 54% then there is at least some demand there.  And if she can fix the place up with herself and her son's, then she can probably do a lot of the work for not much.  She didn't say exactly how many rooms there are, but it looks like about 28 or so according to her numbers.  If she could even raise the occupancy to 50% at the same rates she could bring in $210K gross, or $17,500 per month.  And if she can make some off the units into efficiency units and rent out to longer term people she could do better then that.  It is probably a long long shot, there are a lot of IF's in my analysis and we don't know enough of the other factors involved.  And if anyone thinks this business is  way too time consuming, they may want to re think that.  I travel the country with my family 3-6 months per year while  doing this.  So it can be done if you have a big enough desire.

I tried Amazon Firestick and ran into quite a few issues with my the “not so technical people” having trouble accessing content. I switched over to Cox cable that everyone seems to be used to for now. No complaints since I switched. I don’t like Cable TV and don’t even have it in my own house. I use streaming Netflix or Amazon Prime. But as if now, cable TV still seems to be the most accepted TV medium out there for most people. Maybe in 5-10 years that will be different. Hopefully so, since I own a lot of Netflix stock lol. But for now, I suck it up and pay the stinking cable bill each month so I don’t have phone calls or complaints. :-)

@Crystal Davidson I did the same thing with a run down 23 unit Garden Motel. I split a couple larger units to two smaller units. Made storage space into extra units and now have 29, soon to be 30 Studio/Efficiency units. However, mine are in a historic downtown, with about 23,000 population in our county seed city (Okaloosa county) and 40 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico, sugar sand white beaches and warm emerald waters! I gutted and renovated one unit at a time renting them out and using proceeds to renovate the next unit. Mine rent for $800 per month and I rent about 1/2 or 1/3 at weekly rates ranging from $200-$300 depending on the time of year. I stay pretty much 90-100% full. My current rent roll from this project alone is $20-27K with only $100K debt! I self manage and have a couple part timers help me with maintenance and cleaning duties. I hire a part time manager when I travel also. I travel 3-6 months per year around North America in My R V with my family Home schooling our 6 & 8 year old boys along the way. So your model is absolutely doable. I believe that there is a big opportunity for the old worn out motels around the country. For this type of business model. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

@Johnathon Arcay good job. Seems like you have the beginnings of a good deal going. Seems like your numbers will work. I’m happy or you!

@Jordan Sitzler Congrats on your “potential” 1st deal. And congrats at saving up $15K for an investment property. 1. A contract should be easy enough to get. Do you have any friends who are realtors or friends of friends who can give you one? That’s the easiest way. Even if you offered to pay them a flat fee commission for helping you through the transaction. Maybe $1,000-$1,500. You may get some other useful advice from the realtor as well along the way that will help you out. If you don’t want to go that route, I’m sure some time on Google and YouTube will show you the way. 2. The tougher part will be to secure your financing. Not sure you can get a bank loan in 15 days. Not sure of down payment needs for vacant land. Probably at least 20%. And it would probably take 30-45 days for the bank to process and fund. Sounds like you haven’t finalized things with “borrowing” $45K from your brother. You may want to do that 1st before you go to the trouble of writing up a contract and all. Not sure how much upside there is in the deal, but if there is enough, your other option is a hard money loan or get a partner to go with you on the deal. Both of which could be very costly. 3. As for the septic inspection, that is normally on the buyer as part of your due diligence cost. If you negotiated for him/her to pay if it fails the inspection, then maybe you could get that in writing. Then have him meet you at the property when the septic company comes out. If. It fails the inspection he can pay right there and then. If if passes, you pay the bill. 4. I’m sure you have already calculated the costs involved with having a trashed good for nothing mobile home removed from your property. If not you will want to nail down hat cost as someone (most likely you) will have to come up with that $$ right after closing and it could possibly be a Few thousand dollars to get rid of it. Sometimes if it has any value at all you can find someone to take it away for free. 5. If your going to put another mobile home or manufactured home on the property you will need another big stack of cash shortly after closing to do this. I’m sure you have already thought of that also. If you don’t put a home on the property, you may have a very difficult time selling the vacant land in a rural area. (I’m only guessing it’s in a rural area since it has a septic tank.) Just my 2 cents worth. I have no clue of your area or “real value” of your deal. I have never purchased vacant land, or a mobil home, so I could possibly be completely wrong. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Wes....My opinion is that if you have a desire to  rent a property and then Airbnb it for a profit is that you can definitely do that.  Not something that I would do, but I'm sure it can and has been done both successfully and unsuccessfully many times in the past.  I would definitely be up front with your intentions with the owner.  Many, probably most will say no.  but if you meet with 10 and you have a good presentation and business plan to show him/her, I would be surprised if you didn't get at least 1 yes.  I would consider renting one of my properties to the right person under the circumstances.  I have a couple of my units that I rent out as Airbnb units.  They are always my best, cleanest and most well taken care of units.  We are in them cleaning them 2 x per week and fixing/replacing anything that is not up to 5 star standards, that Airbnb demand you get or they fire you.  (And when I say we, I mean my wonderful hourly part times that work with/for me.)  :-)

As far as getting an owner to "buy off" on the idea...You could offer a number of things for instance: Long term 4-5 year lease.  Pay 1st month, Last month and Security deposit up front.  Pay for 3 months up front.  Offer a small percentage of the profits back to him/her.   Offer a hire per month rental amount.  Offer to show them how to run an Airbnb and make more monthly income from their properties if they are interested.  Offer to give them all the furniture and the Airbnb business that you build up over the next 3-5 years. And on and on. There are literately dozens and dozens of ways to skin this cat.  If you want it bad enough you can make it happen.  Good luck and let us know how much money your making in 3 years!  :-)

As some of the other people noted there is a decent up side cost to getting everything set up, which I am sure you have calculated into your plan.  But I think you could definitely do this with the right property, and the right owner.  If anyone wants to rent one of my units long term and try this just let me know.