All Forum Posts by: Christian Ehlers

I doubt you'd get any money for a poop cleaning fee without them having a clause in the lease for that since they've been so difficult so far. Definitely get a new lease that's more detailed and provides consequences for these items not being done, and ideally get a new tenant. If they are this difficult already it probably won't get much easier when you start enforcing more rules. 

Just make sure your rents you are asking are in line with the market rents and go from there. To be more fair you can try to give her as much warning or heads up as possible for the price you'll be asking but it's not required. 

I'd also agree if you're going to bump the rent a lot and want to keep the tenant I would do some repairs/updates asap so she can see you at least care about her home and aren't a "Greedy landlord". 

Sounds like rents are very low and she's been there 10+ years so I see it unlikely you keep her as a tenant with that much of an increase as she is so used to paying such cheap rent but you never know for sure. 

Agreed meet as many people face to face as you can, especially those that are like minded and doing what you want to do. See if there's a way you can help them and tell them what that would be, it will be much harder to get support if you just ask for their time, but it's definitely still doable. 

What are you hoping to accomplish? If you are just starting out you can look into househacking, in which case you just need a great agent and lender to walk you through everything. 

I self manage my STR from out of state and the most helpful things have been Guesty (connects my Airbnb & VRBO calendars and sends out my automated messages to guests & cleaners for reminders) PriceLabs for automated pricing, and I am just testing out furnished finder now this winter. That's as far as tech goes.

For everything else my Cleaners have been incredible eyes on the property and a handyman is super useful as well as others have mentioned. Shouldn't be much more than answering potential guests questions and checking in on guests during their stays, and then the usual property maintenance work when something breaks. 

Hey Gabriel that's a great question. The first thing I would do is talk with a mortgage broker that can help show you what all of your options would be for different loan products, which will of course vary the down payments and other requirements of the loan. 

Given that the interest rate on the student loans is lower IF you can beat this with say 10-12% Cash on Cash return AND have plenty of reserves set aside for emergencies on either property, then I would lean towards the invest in real estate route and use your income from your job to pay down the student loans after that. With Real estate still expecting to go up in value for the forseeable future I'd bet on this benefiting you more in the longrun vs paying off the debt. 

Ultimately it depends on your finances and your risk tolerance, the less risky bet is to just pay it off.

Some of that is just part of the business, potential tenants don't know what they don't know and some will be tire-kickers. However having your rental minimum requirements displayed prominently upfront will help weed some people out, not sure if that's something they are already doing?

We've been pitching creative financing when it makes sense as many deals don't cashflow here with current prices & rates. Also bigger rehab projects have been taking a steeper discount than usual because so many investors don't want to do them at the moment. 

What Lucy Said ^

Once signed yes you want to get a title company involved that works with wholesalers (some don't even know what that is), and finding a buyer is the most important thing from there

You can listen to Bigger Pockets Book "The Book on Flipping Houses" by J scott for some help. It also depends on your experience in construction, where you are getting the money to fund the renovation, etc. 

I'm guessing you might be newer so if you don't have a ton of experience in construction I'd recommend getting quotes from several General Contractors who's job it would be to manage the renovation in the right order, schedule the Sub Contractors (the specific trades people like electrical, plumbers, drywallers, flooring etc) and even manage getting permits with the city. 

You could also partner with an experienced flipper in your market and learn a lot from them in the process. 

The team is almost more important than the market especially when investing out of state. It does seem like there's a lot of positive factors working for Cleveland though, and I've been hearing about it more and more often so I feel this will be one of the next hot spots for investors from BP, kind of like parts of Florida and Texas have been the past few years.