All Forum Posts by: Charlie Price

I have a 28 unit motel conversion that I rent out monthly and weekly fully furnished units.  It was previously a "flea bag" motel that I renovated.  After dealing with one unruly tenant/guest that I had to get the police involved, I had a conversation with the officer.  He thanked me for all the effort I had done cleaning up the place and that the property looked better then he had ever seen in it and he had grown up there and been on the police force for over 15 years.  He advised me to simply have them sign a Hotel/Motel type agreement and then call him if I had troubles.  He would move them right out immediately!  I have had 0 "stay overs" since implementing this.

I have a one page agreement for weekly people.  First item of agreement states...

Guest is considered a Hotel/Motel guest under our “short term” agreement. He/She DOES NOT have residency rights of a Tenant and is NOT under a Tenant/Landlord agreement. He/She may pay up to 30 days in advance and is still considered a “short term” Hotel/Motel guest under this agreement. At any time management can end this agreement, and ask guest to leave. If guest does not leave, he/she will be considered to be trespassing. Quiet time is between 10PM-6AM

I also collect 1st week and LAST weeks rent at move in time.  That way, I am always 1 week ahead with weekly rental payments and never surprised by a last minute move out.  I have monthly and weekly tenants.  Some that have been with me 3 and 4 years!

@Peter Tverdov

Regarding the debt. issue back in 2008-2011 that led us into bankruptcy.  The debt. was of course not the only issue, but a major one for us.....My wife and I continued to buy and buy properties by pull out all our equity in each rental home that we owned.  So we were not making much cash flow at all per home after we paid the bank and all other expenses.  We had like 30 tenants or so back at that time.  When the market went bad and we could no longer pull equity out of our rental properties, we had nothing to fall back on.  It was a struggle and a learning lesson.  The good renters started to be harder to find, and the ones in our rental homes were having a harder time keeping up with their rental payments.   We feared losing any tenant as they were now hard to find.  We feared having to drop our rents to keep or attract new tenants because we were operating on such thin margins.  Plus, if we lost a tenant we were struggling to recapture, repaint and whatever else we had to do to find a new tenant.  Not to mention the lost month or two of rental income from the turnover.  Of course the bank doesn't care about any of that.  They keep on sending those darn monthly mortgage bills no matter what! We begin making bad decisions to work with tenants not paying or paying late and trying to work with them in the hopes of not having a vacancy (In hind site the worst decision ever was not to evict the tenants immediately as we do now).  So now that we have very little debt. we own our home free and clear, we are able to have a much larger monthly cushion, and a nest egg as well to fall back on.  So we are able to make more confident decisions.  If we lose a few tenants there is not a fear of where we will get the money to get the property right back in great rental shape, market and get a new tenant.  We also put much more of our monthly rent roll back into our properties keeping them in good shape so huge repair bills don't hit us at a bad time hopefully.  If we had to drastically reduce our rents to keep or find new tenants at this time, we would have no problem at all to do that.  We might have to cut back on our 3-6 month RV vacations, LOL, but we would not be suffering.  Hope all that helps someone.

Chase Gochnauer We home school our boys from 9A-12P Mon.- Fri. We use Charlotte Mason curriculum. We completed a full year’s worth of curriculum in 4 months. Wife worked 1 on 1 with one child and I worked 1 on 1 with the other. Of course had tons of educational time traveling as well as the daily “school” work we did. We enrolled them back in school when we returned from our trips. Worked out great for us. We will continue to do as long as we can keep from going crazy with four of us out in our 200 sq. Ft. RV. LOL.

Great to hear all the success stories out there. Congrats to all. I have had rental property since I moved out of the small one bedroom condo I bought when I was in college in San Diego, CA, back in 1990. Boy do I wish I kept that one, LOL. After filing bankruptcy back in 2011 and losing almost everything because of all the RE debt we had, my wife and I have rebuilt and gotten a little lucky over the last 6-7 years. We currently own the following: - A nice victorian triplex in Midtown Atlanta that we have owned for about 15 years. Somehow our lawyer worked out our bankruptcy where we could keep this property. (Self managed by my wife) - Triplex in Columbus, GA (we pay a property manager for this one) - Two single family homes in Crestview, FL. (Sold 1 on a rent to own contract for 10 years, renovating the other one to sell.) - 28 unit apartment complex in Crestview, FL (working on renovating two more which will give us 30 units here. I self manage these units) So currently we have 36 units. $30K or so in rent rent roll per month with little debt this time around. Our expenses are about 50% including all debt service. We have no partners on any of these properties. We (Wife, 6 & 8 year old boys) enjoy traveling in our RV. We took a 3 month trip to Western US two years ago. This last summer we drove it to Alaska and took 6 months off. Currently planning a 4 month trip to North Eastern US. After his next trip we will only have Hawaii left as the last state for our family to have visited All 50 states! We stay almost exclusively, in National and State Parks along the way and meet some great great people. We’ve been to about 37 of the 50 or so major National Parks in the US.

Kevin Bellavance outstanding. Your off to a great start. Great job with all your numbers and information.

I agree with Justin Tahilramani . I would say continue to operate it as is. If you have decent cash flow now, you should be super happy with your cash flow and equity there in 10-15 years! Good luck...keep us posted on your decision and progress.

Dallas Bass at $180K I'd like to see $2,200 - $2,400 +/- in gross rents. Have to look a little harder, longer and deeper. They are out there. Keep looking.

If your newer to investing I humbly suggest sticking closer to home. I don't know about El Paso market, but I'd bet you could find a few good deals most anywhere if you worked hard enough, and talked to enough people. Maybe you could partner up with someone like Adrian Silva and give away most of your profits on a deal or two to learn the ropes. I lived and invested in the concrete city of Atlanta for 20 years or so. My wife sold over a 100 houses a year for 3 years there as a RE agent. We have bought and sold numerous homes there in the north end. Made some money on a lot of them, lost some money on some of them. Still own some rental property there. We moved 6 hours south to the white sand beaches of the Florida Panhandle a few years ago. Never looked back. Love love love the his area compared to the ATL. The competition is fierce there also. With 5 million or so people in the "metro" area it's like 15-20 small micro markets. I still think there is upside there. People and employers seem to be pouring into metro ATL. But I'd want to be there if I was investing there. Be real tough to get an A-B property that cash flows well. I lived in John's Creek, Alpharetta, Duluth area and prices (because of the schools) are a bit high, but good appreciation there. There are transitioning neighborhoods downtown that you could probably make a killing on wth the new stadium, beltway development and I'm sure many more projects got my on in the city. But like I said, the competition if fierce and it would be risky even if you were there scoping out the area daily. Good luck on your search, keep us posted on your progress.

Ryan MacDonald Congrats! Sounds like a great deal. I'd close as quickly as possible. As soon as you get the clean title back. 3-4 business days should be plenty. Rent the house back to them as they are requesting. Sounds like you have plenty of equity to afford a worst case eviction. Hopefully it won't come to that. Do the deal quick before they find someone to give them $75K for the same deal.

I agree with Ivy Wang . I've been there and done that. If your determined and a hard worker you'll make it and can do great selling real estate. It's a numbers game. If you contacted just 50 people a day 5 days a week, each and every week, followed up on every lead you got, went to 2-3 RE classes a week and did just this for 3 months, especially this time of season. You would be extremely busy and have a good amount of listings and buyers $$$ in your pocket. I was with Keller Williams in the Atlanta metro area for a while and had a very good experience with them. Good luck and keep us posted.