All Forum Posts by: Dominick Johnson

I live and work in St. Louis. The only areas you will find properties for that price is in D class areas you don't want to be in. North County/Ferguson/Hazelwood will likely have plenty of inventory in that price range. If you're looking for properties where $60k is your 20% down payment, you can find $300,000 houses all over.

 I would suggest you remove the 60 day notice to vacate clause from your lease all together. It is not the tenants responsibility to let you know 60 days in advance that they will be vacating once the lease expires, that should automatically be assumed per the lease. It is the landlord's responsibility to find out if the tenants want to extend the lease to a month-to-month/sign a new lease for a new term/vacate. Even if your verbiage is revised, you will have a hard time winning that case. Not to mention a ticked off tenant who planned on moving when the lease ended but now has to pay you 2 months rent. I wouldn't expect that to be a smooth transaction. 

If they never signed the month-to-month lease, your existing lease is in effect. Also it doesn’t sound like they are terminating early if they are moving out once the signed lease ends. I’d consider it a normal lease ending with no m2m extension and start marketing for a new tenant asap.

House hack if you can make it work with your lifestyle/family. 3.5% down is much more achievable and you could live close to mortgage free and save. Quickest way to get started with REI. Best of luck!

I've been there before. The quickest solution thing you can do is just move and it won't be your problem anymore. Unfortunately it might be a nuisance for your future tenants, but landlords aren't responsible for neighbors so they would have to call the police.

My horrible neighbor story was our first house. Our backyard butted up to the neighbors behind us and they had a chicken coop. We went out of town for a weekend and came home to 3 roosters crowing all day long. I politely asked that they do something about the noise since it was against the municipality to have roosters. They got rid of 2 roosters and kept one with a choke collar on it to muffle the sound. It didn't work, as the rooster crowed all day long but now sounded like it was drowning. I talked to them again and they said they didn't realize it was a rooster when they got it but their kid considered it a pet and they could not get rid of it now. I called animal control and the police and they both said there wasn't anything they could do even though I showed them the municipal laws that roosters were not allowed in the area. Then our neighbors beside us got a rooster and they crowed back and forth all day long. We listed the house the next week and got the heck out of there. Too bad, it would have made a great rental.

Why wait 27.5 years to claim all depreciation, do an accelerated depreciation and get those tax deductions now!

 If your intention is to actually buy a property they won't get annoyed because a repeat client is worth their time. If you just want to ask questions and have them open doors, yes it is wasting their time. As long as they are aware that you are an investor and what your intentions are there should not be any confusion. I recommend using a realtor who is actually an investor themselves so they know how to run numbers and only send you properties that can cashflow.

 Ask a realtor for help. Won't cost you anything if you're buying property. No reason not to use a professional.

This is standard practice. The pros of signing it are that any good agent will invest time finding you exactly what you are looking for if they have a commitment from you to use them and you are their client. The cons of not signing it are that same agent will likely put you on an auto email list of available houses and forget you exist since they have no promise of you using them as an agent. Realtors don't want to waste their time showing a bunch of houses to someone that could end up going with another agent or buy a FSBO without an agent.

If the seller has an agent then it's not ethical, and a good way to get your license suspended if the agent reports it.