All Forum Posts by: Christopher R.

Hi. There is a handyman in my area that I frequently use. When there are small repair issues, I would just send him to the units to address the issue.

My biggest difficulty is that he doesn't accept checks as a form of payment. I don't think he has a bank account. He prefers cash. I intermittently bump into him because we belong to the same church group and I would pay him then.

But I'm thinking there's got to be a faster and easier way to send someone money if they didn't take checks. Any advice?

I am new to REI. I own a triplex and looking to buy another duplex. I haven't been actively looking for partners but my coworker became interested in REI after she has been hearing what I've been doing with my properties. I had tea at her house tonight and she is wondering if she can partner up with me. This is one side of REI that I haven't been looking into--partnerships. I have a couple of questions that I hope you can help me with.

Premises:

• We will purchase a multi family property.
• We will get a mortgage for this deal.
• We will most likely split the down payment and closing costs down the middle (i.e. 12.5% down, half of closing cost).
• She wants me to do most of the active management. She wants to be totally hands off with the property management aspect of things.

• How is the mortgage structured? Whose name will it be under?
• How about the title of the property? Whose name will it be under?
• Considering that I will be actively managing the property? Can you give suggestions as far as equitable ways of dividing the profits/loss?

Matt, I guess I guess I have to get out there and do some detective work and see how my competition looks like. Are the units close to me all updated or are they "older"?

@Raj Gandhi - It does seem to me that I can raise the rent to low 800s if I fix the place up but I guess the question I need I need to answer for myself is should I? I mean, even if I raise the rents, it will probably just break even with the HELOC costs. I guess this is where @Account Closed comments comes in. Does the renovation make sense? Is the vacancy rate too much? Are the tenants leaving too often because the place doesn't look nice enough?

Good food for thought for me. 

@Michael Barbari - The tenants are not really complaining and they seem to be paying on time. I guess being new at this, I have this "idea" in my head of what's appropriate for a rental property. But I guess if someone's willing to pay $725 as is...

Hi. I recently bought a triplex for $235,000. It is fully rented and each unit rents for $725. This is my first rental property and I'm not sure how rentals should look. I mean I fixed it up to where all safety issues that the home inspector found were fixed. In addition, all non-functioning items were fixed. Having said that, the cabinets are quite old and worn out and each units probably needs a renovation. I won't be surprised if it took around $6,000 to renovate each unit.

But here's my question. At $725 a month, how will I ever make this up if I spent $6,000 renovating each unit? This will kill my cash flow for several years!

Did I do it all wrong? I got conventional mortgage on this triplex. Should I have tried to fix it up first and somehow tried to get the cost of the renovation included in the mortgage? How do people do it here?

I typically hear people in the podcast buy beat-up properties and then fix it up. How do you do this when doing conventional mortgages? 

Can I get a HELOC on my primary residence for this purpose? Can I fix it up and then re-finance?

@Silvio Brigliadoro - That is a brilliant idea! I mean, I'm not sure if I want to keep her or not. The others did make a point that I will make extra money from the late payments and she is eventually making her payments. But if I did decide that the extra money from the late payments are not worth the hassle, then increasing the rent will almost certainly encourage her to find a cheaper apartment!

@Benjamin Haberman - She is an "inherited tenant". She came with the property that I just bought. I am not sure if the previous property management company did a good job with screening.

Hi! I finally bought my first triplex. I have Bigger Pockets to thank for my REI education. Now, I'm in my property management education phase.

It seems one of my tenants is always late with her payments. She does end up paying the late fees. And in the end, she also does end up paying the whole month's rent eventually. She has been a tenant since 2012 and she is currently month to month.

I'm still trying to decide what to do with her but if I wanted to call it quits with her, do I actually need to evict her or can I just give her a 30 day notice?

@Joshua Morris - Is it worth it? That is a good question to ask and I sometimes wonder the same thing. In my market (Raleigh-Durham), it is hard to find properties that cash flow (according to BP standards). Here at BP, we have something called the 50% rule which just encourages us investors to properly budget for expenses. I'm only getting cap rates of 4-6% and cash-on-cash rates of less than 9%. In today's market, I don't think you can just look at Realtor.com and pick any property. I think you really have to look for the property. One way to do it is look at properties that are selling below market rate by finding motivated sellers. There are a lot of articles here about that. I've even considered starting a direct mail campaign. 

Here in Raleigh-Durham, I'm finding that multifamily properties (2-4 units) will give me the returns that are respectable.

I encourage you to keep looking and keep running the numbers. Don't pull the trigger if the numbers don't make sense. I think that eventually, you will find properties that will provide good returns for you.

@Beverly Meola - She told me it's $600 up front. Then it ends up being an additional $5 for me each month.