All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Karen, I agree that BP is a fabulous one stop shop for RE info.  Personally, I don't like facebook and only log in about once a month.  I'd much prefer to have such a group set up on BP.  How can we make that happen?  Women's forum?  

How cool is it that we have the freedom to have our own opinions -- each based on our own experiences and/or education -- and that we can express those opinions in a public forum!  I, for one, am thankful that places like BP exist, not only so that we can learn from others, but also so we can consider the perspectives of people not like ourselves and thus, expand our own.  

While we all have the right to our opinions, we've each had different life experiences that led to our becoming the people we are today.  I appreciate and respect the point of view that says, "why focus on the negative when we could be spending our limited life-time on the positive?  We create our destiny based on our actions and are not victims!" 

I also appreciate the point of view that says, "while I'm an adult with agency, my experiences have had a definite and profound effect on who I am and how I navigate the world.  No two people have the same unique combination of nature and nurture, and I will never be able to fully understand exactly what another individual is experiencing and why."

If you don't think a group for women investors is a good fit for your personal needs, great!  If you do, great!  But invalidating the experiences of others based on your own -- and if anything is a waste of time, that would be at the top of the list -- doesn't positively contribute to the BP community.

Haters gonna hate.  But I think it's great that @Jenny Cunninghamtook the initiative to create something from nothing and to positively impact herself and others who choose to join the group.  

Lots of pet discussions on BP.  Might help you come up with a policy.  Here's the latest: 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/223/topics/274946-who-allows-pets-and-why

 No.  

Just kidding.  But this:

. . . and that the only person who voted it up was also male, just illustrates the need for this group even more.  

Men 'splaining to women that what women experience on a daily basis isn't real, or is all in our heads, is but one more manifestation of the very real discrimination we do in fact experience every day.  Not from all men.  But from many men.  

It's too bad that the word "mansplaining" has morphed into a catchall for any time a man explains anything to anyone--because in its purest, original meaning--you've illustrated the concept beautifully, John Thedford.

Still can't delete the colleague, despite multiple emails from support that they are fixing/have fixed it.  I'm nervous about my information being accessible to someone who would copy and paste my profile into his own, and I worry where else he might be copying my information to.  Can you please fix it or at least remove that person from my network?  

I price my units as though they'll have people with pets, so if someone without pets wanted to live there, they pay the same. The way I see it, you'll either accept pets or you won't, so just price the unit accordingly. 

In this case, it probably depends on what the listing says. If pets are allowed but no pet rent is listed, then it's a bit shady to let the tenant know after they apply that the unit will cost more. If it says no pets, then you could ostensibly negotiate a pet rent if you wanted. 

Or you could just increase the security deposit, so rather than speculating that the pets will do more damage than, say, children (and for whom you can't charge extra kid rent, for better or worse), the tenants are only pet penalized if their individual pets actually cause actual damage. 

I wish we could charge kid rent though. It would make scrubbing crayon off walls and snaking Hotwheels out of toilets and scraping fingernail polish off the hardwoods so much less onerous.

As for the "unmarried couple" part, I'm pretty sure that's a protected class, if not federally then probably in SF. Let your PM property manage!

I voted up your response, @Joshua Dorkin, and it's not because of fat fingers this time. Thank you. 

I've accidentally voted on a couple posts I've strongly disagreed with, because I was trying to see who voted while using the app. 

Looks like there's a bug in the app, because tapping the number of votes should bring up who voted, but instead it just added my vote. 

Then I couldn't unvote. 

Maybe now that people are accessing the site on their phones and through the app, this would be a good time to implement the ability to unvote. Otherwise thick fingers might make many of us abstain from voting on anything altogether.

@Robert Laird is a marketing MACHINE in Vancouver.  I'm pretty sure he has employees but am not sure whether he is hiring right now.  In our area, a partnership like this, where you essentially work for someone who knows what they are doing, is probably your best bet.  There are a lot of wholesalers and flippers already in the Portland metro, and it would be counter-productive to reinvent the wheel while pushing it up a hill at the same time.  

"Just finding motivated sellers" is 98% of REI. When you get the secret formula, you can start your own training program and charge people thousands of dollars to pick your brain.

If you want someone to let you "shadow" them for free in your same geographical market, good luck?  I can't imagine why anyone would train someone to compete with them.  But if you are willing to pay for education, or to educate yourself, or to provide value to someone by being a bird dog or as an employee etc., you will probably get much farther much faster.  

You might want to start here or here or here.  

OK BP, I could use your guidance once again!  

Here is the situation:  

Market rents, if the units are in good condition with relatively new finishes is $1300, except there is some illegal dumping in an empty lot across the street that makes the block undesirable for people paying the highest market rents (that's another story . . . )  The two units are in different condition; one just needs some minor repairs (a family of 3 people who keep the place clean, and the dad has previously done maintenance as a job, and English is the family's second language), but the other needs a new kitchen and bathroom (a family of 5 with a dog, where no one is handy).  Both units are 2br/1ba.  

The first family (of 3 where one person has done maintenance as a job) can pay $850.  The second family (of 5) can pay $945 (and they are asking for a larger trash bin at $20 extra/month).  The people in both units are racial minorities (a protected group).  This isn't relevant to the question of how much to charge for rent, but it's relevant in case one tenant wants to falsely claim that I discriminated with a rent increase or tenancy termination based on that.  So whatever I decide, I should probably do exactly the same thing for both units.  

When I met with the tenants in both units last weekend, I told them both that we were looking for $1050 to $1100 in rent, which I noted was still about $200 below market.  

If it makes any difference to anyone, we are implementing RUBS for the water bill, starting one month after they received notice that RUBS would be implemented.  So one side would pay 3/8 and the other 5/8 of the water bill, and that will increase their costs, probably by something like 30-50 per month (if they use water as though they are paying for it).  (The total bill under the previous owner was around $170/month and I expect it should go down to about $100 month now.) 

We are also replacing all the kitchen appliances with a new stainless steel package (fridge, dishwasher, range, and built-in microwave) in each unit.  I'm ordering those today (Best Buy has a good sale through today and we found a stainless kitchen suite for $1550 per kitchen.)  So there's some value-add coming up very soon.

Portland requires 90 days notice to raise rent beyond 5% or to terminate any tenancy.  I was thinking of raising rent for each unit to something like $1000 or $1050 to in just over 90 days on June 1.  They would then decide whether to stay or go.  

On the side that's in better condition, where one of the tenants is handy, we plan to offer him the option to do repairs and maintenance on the property at $15/hour (which I imagine is more than he earns at his job if they can only afford $850 in rent, idk).  We can probably keep him occupied for 10-15 hours per month, if he agrees to do this.  That would add $150 to $225 in his pocket each month.  This would be a completely separate agreement than the rental agreement, and we would 1099 him for the work.  

If people can't afford the rent, they have 90 days to find another place.  If they can, they can stay and we can defer some of our rehab costs.  

Right now, I don't know whether to ask for $1000, $1025, or $1050, but it must be the same for both units, even if one of them has 5 people and a 50 pound dog.  

Your thoughts?