All Forum Posts by: Chinmay J.

@Irfan Saeed - I know someone who went through this. He ended up renting his place for a short term lease. It was couple of summers ago, and being summer time, the rental market was hot. He ended up getting nice 20% over market price for a short term lease.

Day 181 he put the property on market and went under contract in less than a week.

@Michael Swan - The question I posted in an unrelated thread seems to be completely in your wheelhouse based on this post of yours.  Would love to get your expert opinion on how you go about vetting tenants in B and C neighborhoods. 

Multifamilies in B and C neighorhood

@Brandon Monaghan - Yes, you should wait. The less competition the better. LOL

So a distressed property comes on market at night. I call up the the listing agent at 11:00 A.M. Its already under contract

OK On a serious note. A question to you. Do you think the banks are lending as recklessly as they were before the collapse. Not even a fraction of that..

@Lois Ginter - You do make a good point that a lot of low income people would be paying everything with cash, and a lot of their transactions might not be even getting reported to the credit bureaus. They may be responsible, but running a credit report may yield nothing. I know some folks like that, but again they own. 

@Rohan Attravanam - If you don't even own a property yet, your first step really should be buying a property. What kind of property you purchase, what you do with it after you purchase, is entirely up to you. But at least, you should, in my opinion go through process of buying a house, before you venture out and try to buy a place in 3000 some miles away.   

 I believe that you are in way over your own head. Try and take baby steps first. Good luck.

@Michael Swan - Totally agree. The team will make you or break you especially since you can't be 3000 miles from where you live.  

Maybe I just live in a bubble. Most of the people living inside the beltway are living a bubble anyway, and while I technically live outside the beltway, maybe I got sucked into it somehow.  So tell me where I am wrong in my thinking. 

There is a direct co-relation between income levels and one's creditworthiness. I see this all the time where I live, work and hangout. People who have good income (baring unfortunate thing like divorce or medical bills) typically are responsible and have decent credit scores. Even if there is bankruptcy in their past, they tend to show pattern of responsible behavior. These people, if they are renting, are renting because they want to rent. Not because they need to rent.  DC has a high proportion of transient population, so people are coming to DC Metro area all the time for employment reasons. Most of my A+ clients have been non DC natives who moved to DC. 

That brings me to the crux of my question. How do you investors, who own large multi family units in say B or C neighborhood find good tenants to have meaningful occupancy levels. If you have 100 units in your building, I would say 85 to 90% would be a decent occupancy level.  If all your tenants are not A quality tenants, then what would be an ideal mix to make the numbers work. 

Its very hard for me to envision who would be such a person who has low income, good creditworthiness and wants to be a tenant. I have never met such a person in my life. I have met plenty of people who were moderate to low income, had good credit worthiness but most, if not all, had their own house

I don't own any multi family, nor do I have any immediate plans of entering that business, but I do have DREAM of eventually buying one and moving down south.. FLORIDA would be nice ! :-) 

@Ken Jones - I would suggest you try and get your own real estate license, that way you are not relying on third party to provide you/feed you with information. All it takes it is a simple exam. Although, some people fail it multiple times (trust me they do). Its not that hard. Once you have that, you should be able to pull everything out of MLS and run comps yourself.

In the longer run it will save you lot of time, for small investment upfront.

@Michael Swan - Great post ! Did you tweet this to him? I may be wrong, but someone told me recently that he tweets.  

On a serious note, how much time do you spend there? You said you have great team, but how often do you travel down there. I would lose my sleep if I had property across the country which I cannot physically visit as often as I liked.

Sign me up if that's the case. It covers things like snow removal, some landscaping, garbage collection, water and sewer (in some cases). Sometimes HOA may have a community pool (yuk !!) or gym included in the membership dues, and then they set a milllion rules for things you cannot do. You need to read the HOA docs carefully to see what's covered and what's not. HOAs are most anti fun associations out there. No sense of humor. None whatsoever.