All Forum Posts by: Curran D Bishop

Investment Info:

Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment in Milford.

Purchase price: $440,000
Cash invested: $160,000

Bought a home + 3 ADUs as my primary residence. Mailed 35 letters and heard back from 3 owners; closed with this one, without a realtor. Replaced original boiler with modern on-demand gas heater in 2019/2020. Refinanced before Covid froze multi-family refinancing and pulled out equity to rehab 1 apartment and converted into an Airbnb. Have used state programs to upgrade all windows, insulate, instal 3 mini-splits in main home, 1 in ADU in main house; turned garage building with 2 ADUs from oil heat to mini-splits. Used personal funds to replaced roof with metal roof and added rigid foam insulation to bring roof to R60. Slowly improving main home. Installed solar on both buildings. Between Airbnb and bringing rents up significantly—but not as far as market—property is now paying it's own mortgage!

I have a tenant in Illinois who needs to break his lease 2 months early. I'm not looking to make money off him; but do need to have the discussion with him that he's breaking the lease and there are consequences to that. We're just using the Illinois lease that BP puts out (https://app.box.com/s/r0b3spxpse7jc0qe42tz95f056yand9h), but I can't find any specific penalties for early termination in there. Throughout the lease it's clear that the lease is in force until terminated, but I can't find specific enforcement/termination clauses. Can anyone point me to the right part of the document? Is this just an oversight?

I'm in CT, on the coast (50k population town), and thinking about opening a co-working space. I'm looking at a very small space, however: 1000 ft-sq. I'm picturing offering a single space that is conference/dining area, couches/living area. There is a commercial kitchen that could be accessed, and space to create a small private office space. Could do lockers and a few workspaces around the open space. I'm picturing something along the lines of the "Mr Money Mustache World Headquarters" (https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/08/02/introducing-the-m...); so something like $50 a month for 40-50 members; but I'm not sure if that's total naiveté / his model depends on the fact he's already got a million followers and customers are basically signing up to be in the fan club, not looking for office space... Any advice on how to learn about the co-working space business is appreciated!  

 Hi Craig, I'm also in CT, on the coast, and thinking about a co-working space as well. Curious if anyone has tried it--what do pricing models look like, how has access worked (key pad with unique code for each user--does that become a security nightmare if you're dealing with 50 users...); and if there are models for how much space you need per user?

Just noticed I failed to use an "r" in "worth"...

I have a property in Carbondale, IL which I bought in 2013 for $89k. I've been renting it out to a friend since 2018, and would like to sell it to him. He's new to home ownership (this would be his first house purchase). I want to give him a fair deal (I don't want to take advantage of him neither do I want to give him the property), but I'm not sure how to evaluate the value. Zillow says it's worth $90k. Carbondale is not a "hot" location, but I'm surprised it's only appreciated a little over 1% in the last 8 years... what tools do you use for running your own comps?

Also, separate question, if I want to keep them on as month-to-month indefinitely (since so long as rents are below market and their presence makes it hard for me to improve the apartments a year-long lease seems more to their advantage than mine) do I establish a "month-to-month lease" with them that would stipulate when rent is due and what happens at what date when you don't pay, what their responsibilities and mine are, where people can park, etc.?

So what I'm asking is the specifics of when I should/am allowed to approach them and what form that should take. We're three weeks from closing now--should I send a letter to the tenants stating my intentions, should I ask the current owner for their phone numbers and text and offer to meet for coffee and verbally explain... I've never acquired tenants before so I don't know if I'm even legally allowed to approach them before owning the property.

 Yes, they started as year-long leases, but the owner began thinking about selling a couple years ago and didn't renew the leases, just reverted to month-to-month for the last couple years. I need to double check, but I believe the month-to-month was an actual contract that stated the same terms as the year-long lease but without the year-long obligations.

I am closing on a small multi-family at the beginning of June. It is a house with three accessory apartments: we'll be living in the main house and keeping the three existing tenants who currently have month-to-month leases. What is the protocol for beginning contact with inherited tenants? My intention is to not initially increase the rent, make some improvements to the efficiency of their HVAC systems (go from ancient oil to high-efficiency gas) and, once I have the work done, increase the rent to compensate. So I'm thinking of keeping them month-to-month until the work is done, and I also want to let them know how I'm planning to proceed going forward (i.e. I'm not going to ask them to leave when their leases are up, increase the rent immediately, etc.). How have you all proceeded in similar situations?