All Forum Posts by: Dave Poeppelmeier

Quote from @Nikash Rajeshbabu:

Quote from @Jordan Myer:

Quote from @Nikash Rajeshbabu:

Hey all, 

   Just discovered this platform as I was watching the biggerpockets YouTube channel yesterday! Just to give some background I'm currently a 3rd year student studying electrical and computer engineering but have a deep interest in real estate as well. I just finished the 75 hour NJ pre-licensing course and have signed up for the state exam at the end of the month. Just wanted to seek any advice that you guys may have on starting out as a younger real estate agent and what is realistic while being a full-time student as well. Any advice is appreciated, thanks!

 One of the most valuable things you can do is to find a mentor! They don't necessarily have to be an active agent, just someone with experience and want to help

 I actually do have a couple of agents I planning on talking to after I obtain my license. Hoping one of them would be opening to mentoring me, thank you for the advice!

Nikash, that's awesome that you have committed this much effort into RE so far as a college student! I'm not trying to be a jerk, but here's my thought: do you like or love Engineering? If you're studying to be an Engineer, that's not a small commitment. If you truly love Engineering, your career options are, as you know, pretty solid. If you just like Engineering, or love RE more, and this is your true calling, why continue with Engineering? Can you be a part time RE agent as well as having your daytime job as an Engineer? Yes. Are you going to get good at being a RE agent if you're not in the world full time? You can, but slowly. It's also not the best time to jump into being a Realtor, especially brand new and full time, and I personally don't see things changing much in the next couple of years when you graduate. If you have a backstop of some kind, then that changes things of course. 

The other thing regarding a mentor, is what are you going to do for your mentor to make it worth them taking you under their wing? Most good RE agents are too busy to simply donate their time to a new agent (unless the brokerage you go with has that kind of mentorship program), but if you provide a service to them of some kind (running reports, doing other non-licensed stuff) then you have a better chance of getting that guidance that all of us needed when we first started. 

Again, I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer, just want to make sure you're looking at thing from all angles. Best of luck to you!

@Anthony DelVecchio it depends on the housing culture of the College/University. At Toledo, our leases run the entire 12 months. Most kids who live in houses stay during the summer and work jobs and generally hand out and do nothing (ah, the good ol' days...). If the market where you're looking does 9 month leases, yes you can so STR, but you now need to furnish the entire house. Can you supply a furnished house all year? You could, and that would attract international students and potentially kids with higher earning parents that don't want to deal with having their kids find an old couch to use, but that brings its own set of challenges. Bottom line is you have to find out what the housing culture is in the market you're looking at, and if you try to be an innovator, then like anything else be prepared to fail a little bit until you find out if that idea will stick or not.

Quote from @Christyn Budzyna:

Hi everyone,

I'm a long-time reader and first-time poster here on the Bigger Pockets forums. I've been managing mid-term and short-term rentals for a little over a year through co-hosting and arbitrage, but looking to make my first purchase in 2024. 

I live in New York, but have been curious about the State College, PA market. I've spent some time there working on projects through Penn State, so I have a basic working knowledge of the area. 

I'm aware that new regulations are in place for short-term rentals in State College, including a limit to 120 days per year, a parking spot for each bedroom, and a tenant designating it as their primary residence for 8 months out of the year. 

With these rules in place, I'm considering purchasing a property to rent as student housing (mid-term rental) for 8 months out of the year, and using it as a short term rental for the other 4 months a year (ideally, football season). 

I'm curious if anyone else has invested and/or used this strategy in the area? Any other helpful knowledge when it comes to the State College, PA market? 

Thanks in advance!

- Christyn 

Hi Christyn, unfortunately I'm going to join in the Debbie Downer parade. I do Student Rentals at The University of Toledo, and although it's different at every college, you either have to do Student Rentals or STR, not both. No student is going to go for a lease for only the Winter/Spring/Summer so you can do STR for the football games. Now, at a big school like Penn State, you might have enough demand for STR for the football season as well as for visiting professors/contractors/etc the rest of the year, but obviously you'll have to do your homework on the rest of those options.

I will also vouch for Greater Metro. Karey and Jessica Donley are fantastic. Don is still around as well. 

Quote from @Amy Mills:

Hi everyone, I'm looking into buying my first investment property. I own my primary home in Brooklyn, but nothing cash flows here, so as I was looking outside of NYC I stumbled upon Philly. 

I found a student rental a few blocks west of Temple U in the Cecil B Moore area. After running numbers it looks great, cash flows positive and already rented till July 2024. Some questions:

-I see a lot of rental vacancies on Zillow. Is vacancy a problem? is there too much supply?

-If I can't find a new tenant for the next school year, am I screwed? It's my understanding that in this area, there are only students and no other type of renters.

-Anything else I should keep in mind?

Amy, if you're going to do Student Rentals, you have to DO Student Rentals. They are their own beast, with fixed leasing periods (typically revolving around the academic calendar), students look in the fall or spring for their house for the following academic year, a tight window in the summer for repairs, etc. The returns are generally a little higher than a normal LTR, but you have to WANT to do Student Rentals. It's also best to do Student Rentals if you are local as finding a Property Manager that knows what they're doing is difficult in most areas. If you're simply looking for something outside of NYC, there are much simpler ways of doing it, typically with a Single Family or Duplex as a standard LTR. 

Quote from @Esther Tama:

Thanks! I’ll have to look into zoning - didn’t even think of it. Currently it’s a duplex with 1 bedroom each. Good suggestion on looking at doubling up, and making full rent due. Appreciate the advice! 

If you have a 1/1 Duplex, you might not get the typical "Student Rental" bump in rent. Typically, when students rent off campus houses, they want to live with their friends. Not every off campus house is Party Central (some schools are, however), but the attraction is getting out from under your Parents and RA's thumb and live how you want to. But, with a 1/1 unit, you're going to most likely get a couple or some Grad students, which isn't a horrible thing. Be sure to check and see what other 1/1 duplexes are getting in rent, and see if you can talk to some students on Facebook groups or something and see what the demand for that type of unit is. 

@Christopher Sandys Wow, really didn't feel that was going to trigger anyone, but here we are. No, I'm not calling you a slumlord. I'm calling the person who owns the house that has holes in the floor and plaster falling from the ceiling on Loraine or the lady who was living with cockroaches so bad one fell off the ceiling and bounced off my head just off E Central. I can say that because I encountered that as a Home Care PT back in the day.

Also, being RRP Certified I can tell you that no, the paint chips aren't the main cause of lead poisoning in kids, it's the lead dust. The lead dust gets on the floor in front of the window, a toddler's toy gets dust on it, it goes in their mouth... And now you do have lead poisoning. And yes, this happens in more socioeconomically depressed areas because they still have the old windows, so on and so forth.

So, if you want to challenge the City on evidence to back their ordinance, go for it. Best of luck because that's what numerous people have asked over the years and have gotten nothing back from them.

It looks like the Toledo Municipal Court last week ruled in favor of the City and the injunction has been terminated. The next court date is July 13th, but it's not looking good in my opinion. The Appeals Court ruling during the last lawsuit is still the final word it's looking like: http://lcapps.co.lucas.oh.us/P...

What this Ordinance does is really force the slumlord owners to fix up their properties, if and when the City gets out of it's own way regarding testing and implementation. Nobody wants kids to get lead poisoning, and these owners do need to be taken to task. The biggest question is what timeline is the City going to give now that there are 3 deadlines that have passed (June 2022, Dec 2022, June 2023). 

If you're still looking to Invest here, the biggest things you need to look out for is peeling paint and lead dust. That means if you're going to buy a house with wood siding, be ready to paint it every 5 years since that's how long the Lead Certification Certificates (or whatever they're called) are good for.  You want something with some kind of siding: metal, aluminum, vinyl, or brick. You'll still have to paint roof trims, porches, etc, but that's not a big deal. Good luck with installing vinyl siding: it's ridiculously expensive right now. 

The other big thing to avoid are original windows with 5 layers of paint, half are painted shut, another quarter don't open/stay open, etc. Those windows are going to have a really hard time passing the dust swipe tests for lead dust because they are testing for an absolute microscopic level of dust, and if there's lot of paint on those windows, there's a good chance there's lead in there. If you have replacement windows (wood or vinyl), you should be good to go unless the house next to you is a peeling paint mess. Then, the lead dust from that house is going to blow into yours... yes that's one of the biggest complaints we as investors have with the dust swipe portion of this ordinance. 

Quote from @Darius Ogloza:

Try this exercise: look up (1) the historical price of your Midwest SFR at the time of first sale, (2) the rate of inflation from the year the SFR was built until the present and (3) the market value of the property. In most cases, you will find that the long term holder lost a ton of money over the life of the property. Typical figures for Toledo Ohio are something along the following lines:

Price in 1945 - $14,000

Value today of $14,000 in 1945 dollars - $235,949

Price in 2023 - $100,000

In short, the vast majority of those properties not only failed to appreciate but actually lost you a significant amount of money over their life.  

Looking at a three or four year segment of time can be powerfully misleading.  

 Let's also look at the price of land in Toledo, OH in 1945 compared to 1776: Exactly, it doesn't matter. 1945 may as well have been in 1776 in Toledo. Toledo and Ohio in general went from being one of the most important States in the Union (when the West wasn't nearly as developed as it is today), to it's heyday in the 50's and 60's when the nations steel and cars were made here, and of course the bottom falling out in the 70's and 80's, stagnation in the 90's while everyone regrouped, and the 00's, 10', and now 20's when these cities are thriving again. Yes, everyone's going to say "but they're losing population!!!". Yeah, those generations that stayed are dying, or moving out to the Suburbs as that migration pattern continues. 

@John Anderson You are correct in your general assumptions that coasts are appreciation and Midwest is Cashflow. What you're likely experiencing is this rediscovering of these markets from investors who see the same thing you're seeing: Good returns regarding boring, not sexy cash flow. Don't overthink it, if you're getting bonus appreciation good for you, but stick to the meat and potatoes of why you invested in Detroit and Cleveland in the first place. 

@Steve Williams, Student Rentals definitely command higher rents, but you really have to know what the geographical Student Housing areas are and the rental culture of the school. @Will Gaston and myself have commented lots on this topic, but I would recommend finding out who owns Student Rentals in your town and talk to them about what a 2/3/4/5 bedroom rents for, when the leasing season is (Fall vs Spring) for the next school year, and what do students expect (nice house like their parent's or bombed out party houses). Once you get that information, you can start to plan for making your rental Student Housing. One thing that I would recommend, is whoever you put in your rental, make the lease revolve around the Academic Calendar, starting in August or September. That way, if a non-student moves out, you don't have an empty house in January sitting empty until the next school year starts. Finally, put everyone on one lease. You don't want to rent by the room for a little extra profit and have 3/4/5 leases in a house, when you can have everyone on one lease that is responsible for everything as a group. As a group, if one person isn't paying their rent, they'll get on them so they all don't get kicked out! Best of luck to you.