All Forum Posts by: Derek Luttrell

@Kenny Dahill @Tim S. good ideas, and I actually already have an Airbnb on this campus, though the kicker is I bought the Airbnb with the existing furniture included. If I were to furnish this new property, it would cost more than just carrying the mortgage until June. I could toy with renting it furnished come June, but then that's another liability, and students tend to already have their own stuff.

A short term lease until June is an idea, but I've never tested the market for that before. 

@JD Martin do you have trouble filling those 6-ish month leases? Do you rent them for a lower rate just to help carry your costs until peak leasing season comes along? What is your plan for the place you close on next week? 

@Frank Geiger that's what I was thinking, to basically consider the holding costs a part of my initial out of pocket investment, and try to take that amount off of the purchase price. It's been listed for 6 weeks, and just had a 7% price reduction, so they could be getting antsy to sell. 

@Brian Ploszay my experience with student housing has been that, once settled in, the students actually stay longer since they are locked into several years of schooling anyway. They also don't look at the cost of rent as a whole, but rather on a per/person level, which tends to welcome higher total revenue.

We all have our preferred niche, though.

How do you manage to fight seasonality? I am interested in a SFR within a mile of a major university. However, the best returns in the area come when you list a rental in early Spring for a June 1st move-in, because the school year ends in mid-May and that is when students assess their housing for the following year.

With it only being October now, what's a creative way to lock this in knowing it won't be occupied until June? Even if the seller agrees to a 60-day close, I would still have several months of holding costs that would be great to avoid if possible.

Hi All,

I am under contract on what would be 8th rental, but have run into something new. After going under contract, I had my usual inspection done, and then submitted formal repair requests to the seller. The response deadline I set was 6/24, and on 6/24 they submitted an extension request to 6/26 (yesterday) to decide what repairs they do or do not agree to do. My requests demand that a licensed electrician and licensed plumber do some work that the inspector said needed to be done, with receipts provided to show who performed said repairs.

My buyer's agent has told me that he "believes" the repairs have been worked on, but he does not know who did them. Also, it is now 6/27 (past the extension deadline), and I have not received any actual response from the seller regarding my requests. I also told my agent multiple times that I wasn't going to order the appraisal until the repairs were done (or we at least received the seller's response), yet yesterday he e-mailed my lender to "go ahead and schedule the appraisal" without notifying me first. We have done 5 deals together in 15 months, and he had earned my trust, but it really felt like he was trying to pull a fast one by talking to my lender behind my back.

My question is--since the response deadline has past, and I have nothing in writing that says the seller has actually agreed to the repair requests, am I free to walk with my $1,000 earnest money deposit returned to me? My loan has been approved pending nothing more than the appraisal.

I closed on my newest property on 12/21 and had a lease signed with deposit and first month's rent paid two weeks later. As long as you are priced correctly and the home offers something that sets itself apart from the competition, time of year shouldn't play as big of a factor as many people think. When people call or text with initial interest, I ask them all the same pre-screening questions: target move in date, reason for moving, number of occupants, jobs/income, pets, and if they smoke. If they check the boxes, I tell them there will be an open house that weekend where they can pick up an application. I closed on 5 properties in 2018 and none of them took more than two weeks to fill, so it's worked well so far.

@Joe Splitrock side bar: who measured/installed your flooring? Home Depot just told me this morning that it would take them 3-4 weeks after measuring to come out and install, so I'm shopping around. 

@Jay Hinrichs congrats on today's closing--that is a beautiful house. Bet you had a nice ride to the bank today :) 

@Jay Hinrichs we're obviously on different playing fields, as this is just your everyday $90,000 single family in NE Indiana that will rent for $1,200, but the moral of the story stays the same. I never imagined someone feeling so entitled that they find it their right to dictate who gets the privilege to live next to them, but you learn something new everyday. 

@Andrew Syrios that about sums it up. I'll just have to show him that I'll find him the best neighbor he's ever had. Thanks for the input.