All Forum Posts by: Andy H.

Not having your name or company name in the name of the trust is a no-brainer. I was thinking more along the lines of someone already having the property address (a tenant, for example) and trying to find the owner. In that case, I'm not sure what the downside is to having the land trust named after the property address. 

I hadn't heard of Randy Hughes, so took some time to look him up. He mentions in several podcast interviews and articles that his home study course has a whole chapter devoted to how to name a land trust. Short of shelling out the $$ for his course to get all the details, he did mention the idea of naming your trust something that sounds "big and important" so people don't know if it's just a single person or some big organization behind it. 

When creating a land trust to hold a piece of property for anonymity reasons (or to transfer a property out of your personal name and into an LLC, which is the beneficiary of the trust), a common practice seems to be to name the land trust after the property address, ex. "123 Main Trust".

Is this a good practice? Are there any drawbacks to using this naming convention? I seem to remember hearing at least one attorney say this was not a good idea, but I'm not sure what the reasoning was. 

We have rentals in several different markets and haven't really seen any industry wide standards regarding vacancy fill times and lease up fees. Vacancy times can depend a lot on things specific to the particular market you are in. For example, the time of year can be a factor, especially when you couple that with weather in the market. 45-60 days does sound high to me, but could be an indicator that either there aren't a lot of renters in that area or there is an over supply of rental properties for prospective tenants to choose from. If the latter is the case, anything you can do to make your rental stand out will help. 

As far as leasing, if your property is managed by a PM, they will usually handle the leasing. In our experience, lease up fees vary between locations, but tend to similar within a location (for example, in Houston, a full month's rent seems to be the going rate). Between half a month's rent and a full month's rent seem to be common though. 

Thanks @Brian Gibbons!

@Brian Gibbons (for some reason the @mention isn't working for me even though you were part of this thread):

Do you have an updated link that you could share? I'm really interested in hearing the negotiation you referenced, but the dropbox link doesn't seem to work anymore.  Thanks!!

@Jeff Rabinowitz Will they act as a registered agent for an LLC? And if so, do you know the cost?

We've worked with @Arissa Pedroza before and would highly recommend her. She's very easy to work with and understands what makes a good rental and the rehab process. She specializes in Cibolo/Schertz, but also knows the San Antonio market. 

Assuming you have the MLS data you are interested in mapping (which you'd have to get from someone who has MLS access if you don't since you want sold prices and Texas is a non-disclosure state), you could create your own map using batchgeo.com.

The website takes a spreadsheet as input and produces a map with pins on it. Clicking on a particular pin pops up all the data you have entered for that address. Columns in your spreadsheet have to include address, city, state, and zip. Then you add columns for whatever else you are interested in, eg. list price, sold price, beds, baths, sq ft, etc. To produce a heat map type effect, add a column in your spreadsheet called "group" and assign an appropriate value for each address. When you generate the map, all items with the same group value will have the same pin color. For example, you could use sold price/sq ft as your "group" and designate "<$50/sq ft" as one group, "$50-70/sq ft" as another group, etc. Any house that sold for less than $50/sq ft, put "<$50/sq ft" in the cell in the group column in your spreadsheet, etc  All those houses will show up as the same color pins on the map. 

We've used Maurice Federbusch of Value Funding Inc before (mortgage broker). He was responsive and easy to work with. He can help even past 4 loans. Can't figure out how to insert a link on the mobile BP site, but his website is www.valuefunding.net

Imagine our surprise when a former tenant who owes about $1200 in damages beyond what her security deposit covered contacted us asking about setting up a payment plan to repay! We figured we'd have to take her to small claims court or just eat the loss. Hopefully she'll actually follow through. 

Anyway, we're looking for suggestions on how to structure the payment plan with her. Should we ask the tenant what she can afford to pay and when? Or should we set the terms and then negotiate if she says it won't work for her? 

$200/month for 6 months? $300/month for 4 months? Any suggestions appreciated.