All Forum Posts by: Colin Wyatt

I don't have specific ideas myself, but if you're going for great, BP had John Ruhlin on EP 475 (https://www.biggerpockets.com/...) and he's all about ways to make gifts special/memorable. For the lower end (which matches my budget right now), his idea was a really nice, personalized luggage tag, which I think you can get for $25-40. 

Certainly good questions to figure out if it makes sense in your market. Over the summer, we were looking for a duplex and saw a couple instances of a zero-lot line split of a duplex. One for sale had 3 MLS listings, for each individual unit and one that advertised it as a duplex. We were advised that we couldn't use an FHA and get both sides, so we couldn't pursue for a house-hack.

I think it was around $350k for both or $215k each. They ended up selling individually and the seller got an extra $80k that way. So while investors got chased away from the deal, the seller still had plenty of buyers to choose from in the hot market. 

@Mike Hoffman What a great story, thanks for sharing. I have an opportunity to get an off-market ~20 unit from someone I met, showed interest in, and found out she owns apartments. This is after I just bought our first home, a house-hack. It's also in Madison, so your story is just another level of exciting. 

You've impressively taken great action and I'm glad @Chris Hake was able to help you out. I'll be joining the REIA soon, so I look forward to meeting you in person.

If you don't mind, I'd be interested to know which banks you tried working with via private message?

Congrats on getting it done, what a massive win. 

 David, this makes perfect sense to me. I'm looking at a 19 unit right now and plan to be all 3. If it was much larger though, I'd certainly look at my weaknesses and offload that ASAP. Like you, I wouldn't manage much larger myself. Certainly, though, there are levels of management that you might be involved with. For example, my first off-loading might be a leasing agent or on-call maintenance. I would not likely just go 100% property management for 21 units, for example. 

Thank you to everyone who gave so many good resources here, my homework is to read/apply them. 

Podcast 448: https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Guest Dion Mcneeley shared that he will give the tenants a notice of how much he paid for the house (big number anchoring technique), gives them a report strait off Rentometer, and then asks them what would be fair for their rent. I've never tried it out, though I intend to when my inherited tenants lease is up. He indicated he had good success and the tenants asked to raise their rent to slightly below market. 

It's not fair to assume renters are dumb, they most likely know they have been getting a great deal. However, they may just not have the resources to pay market rent. I'd second Joe's suggestion of giving them options that all work for you. 

You know the old saying, the ___________ (insert "stock market", "media", "gurus") have predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions. Am I having a harder time finding a deal than a year ago? I'm not rooting for depreciation, but if I buy right, I'll still build wealth in today's market. 

I just looked up my cities unrelated roomer policy:

So I could run a boarding house out of how many square feet that unit has, ha. Of course, I would need to check the HOA documents for other possible limitations imposed. The unit technically only has 4 parking stalls and no on-street parking close by, so that may limit how much I can get from this strategy. Sounds like the primary target is students and the main university is 6 miles away, do you think that would be a big detriment? Thanks for the idea!

My wife won't let me move our family of 5 into the 1BR, haha. Good point on the attorney fees though, I didn't account for them. I think 12% sounds great, and I'm sure it's pretty area specific, but do you have a COC % that you look for?

Good point, I am; the lender I'm working with is fantastic and has been able to give break downs of closing costs and PITI, so I do have PMI accounted for. Since there's so much potential equity in the deal, we'll likely do the 3.5% down with FHA and then refinance to a conventional to knock out the PMI, as we'll theoretically have over 25% equity in a year.

@Jacob Simpson, Good question. The 1BR is currently permitted for rental, however, that permit does not transfer with title and we'll have to get another permit. We were advised to work with a real estate attorney and potentially claim undue financial hardship if we can't rent it out. I'm still showing a 12% CoC w/o the 3rd unit.