All Forum Posts by: Diego Ortega

@Thomas J Kerns

My gf and I did the same thing and we are now almost a year in. We inherited a tenant that had 2 months left on her lease. We tried to fix things for her and she did bug us quite a bit about random things and stiffed us with a $700 water bill at the end on move out. 

The new tenant we were able to screen. She had some initial things for us to fix as they came up, but nothing major and it's mostly through text. She pays every month on time and the only annoyance is she likes to talk a lot. When you think about it though, i spend maybe like 1-4 hours a month doing anything which is very low and nice for the cash flow. She never knocks.

My advice is find out as much as you can about who is already living there, if they have been paying, make sure if you take over the lease you get the security deposit, check to see the water bill is up to date since the city just bills the address (we didn't check this and got screwed there), and if there are tenants that are month to month before you buy it, you can ask for them to vacate by the time you close if possible. 

Be professional and respectful to your tenants and everything should be okay as long as you screen correctly. Have an attorney write up your lease and explain the state laws. It cost us $500 and worth every penny. We have an awesome lease and feel peace of mind knowing we've done all that we can.

I would recommend Oak Park and Redford so far from experience. We currently are house hacking a duplex in oak park. We have a 4 bed/1 full bath/2 half bath renting for $1500 for two year lease. Mortgage is $1220. Now for this one we put a bit of work into both sides cause we wanted something nice and to get high renta. Our side is the same but one less room and half bath. The Redford home someone else had fixed up all new and modern. Basically flipped. Mortgage is $404 and we rented it for $1000 for two years. So the cash flow is good and these places are basically done up like new. So as of now, there hasn’t been much maintenance at all coming up.

@Joe Del Greco

Welcome! Let's connect!

@Keith Jourdan

Very nice! My girlfriend and I are house hacking in oak park right now and got fairly high rent for the area making places look like yours! I would say raise the rent like everyone else said and you will probably get it!

Beautiful! I may have to steal some of your color themes! Love it!

@Jenelle H.

I agree with Alan. I am a young professional who works in downtown Royal Oak and many of my coworkers who are 21-40 rent in Suburbs nearby. (These are people with a salary range of 50k-100k or more). Ferndale and Royal Oak being one of the top cities to rent near me due to the downtowns and nightlife. Young professional flock here and rent is really high. But that also means it's a little tougher to find a deal in those cities. So that is spilling over to Oak Park, Hazel Park, and anywhere young professionals can find nearby. 

Yes, some will want to purchase a home here, but there isn't much land so most of my coworkers with big families tend to buy further north like Clarkston, where it's more family oriented and you get some decent land sometimes with your house.

Check out the rental market in Royal Oak now: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/Royal-Oak-MI...

The cheaper ones are literally to rent a room.

Jenelle Harris I live in Oak Park, MI which is 5 minutes from Detroit. Detroit is a huge city and have lived there for school back in 2008 for school and various other nearby cities since then. Downtown and midtown of Detroit have blown up. I've seen this first hand. Most people can't even afford a decent place in those areas now. I also work in the auto industry as well rentals and flips now (just started). Rent is high right now in Detroit and many cities nearby. And you can buy property for good prices still. But that is going up too as more investors start to show up. Of course there are parts of Detroit that you should avoid like any other city with poverty. I think the most thriving cities by Detroit are: -Ferndale -Oak Park -Royal Oak -Berkley -Birmingham -Clawson -Troy And around those cities you will also find plenty of C-class cities that offer good rents for the price you would pay for a home that needs a little work.

@Jason Lavender

I was debating setting up a Christmas tree inside to try to help a family envision living there. Haha. Let me know how it goes and I will share my results as well. We may get lucky and get a buyer before the year is up!

@John Clark

We used the same agent that I had used to do my first house flip, but I explained that I intended to house hack and that helped her understand what to look for in the areas I mentioned. We found a property in not that nice of an area with a troubled tenant, but we got to meet the owner and real estate partner. Turns out they had a few more properties they were selling because one of them wanted out. They didn't put much money into the properties and got whoever in there, which led to headaches. We worked out the numbers on one that was more like two condos stuck together to make sure we would enjoy living there as well and got to work. We redid a lot, but were able to increase rents really well. 

One thing I would make sure to do when you find a place, ask that one unit be empty at closing for you to move into. And also ask about the current tenant on the otherside if there is one. You will inherit them for the rest of their lease if they are on one.

@Johnny Hastings

Thank you so much for the kind words of encouragement! I was starting to think I missed something and was doubting myself. I will leave it on the market for now and wait for the slow period to end. Hopefully you'll see me post a success story in the next couple of months in the forum!