All Forum Posts by: Darrell Lee

I own a few Springfield rental properties. It is a nightmare evicting deadbeat tenants, so when they are out I will only go back to AirBnb, short term rentals in the future as Vermont has laws very favorable to annual leasing tenants. It's more work, but in the past, I had good experiences, especially with travel nurses, doctors and affluent out-of-state skiers renting for a whole month or winter.

 I spent 6 days in the hospital over Thanksgiving and all the nurses were travel nurses. I walked in for gallbladder surgery and when I was discharged, I could not walk or stand from the mistreatment by the post-op care. After a week I still couldn't stand and I went to the ER to get advice how to walk again and again they were worthless. I decided to experiment on myself and was successful and able to walk again after 2-3 weeks of self treatment using diuretics and laying down and sleeping after 4pm to elevate my legs to help reduce the severe edema. It worked and I'm almost back to normal... no thanks to the idiot doctors there. I should sue them for malpractice...

Wow... those incentives are so good, why wouldn't they prefer to be a travel nurse. I have 5 units in process of evicting non-paying tenants and will return them to Airbnb or travel nurse rentals which I had very good experiences with most of the medical tenants. All were 90 day contracts.

There's a few locations I'd avoid and there's some locations that are truly excellent. Drugs can be a problem in any area. But if you are looking at a good neighborhood and one bad druggie house, if you acquire that house, you will improve the neighborhood so I say it's okay.

I would avoid long term rentals right now and stick to travel nurses and Airbnb. I'm in the process of evicting dead beat tenants who stopped paying after the eviction moratorium even though they can afford to pay. Airbnb is much more profitable too as I've had great experience with MD's and RN's as short term Airbnb 3 month tenants. They work a lot so are easy on the properties. 

Good luck, Springfield has some bargains compared to the larger cities in the state at the moment.

There's a few locations I'd avoid and there's some locations that are truly excellent. The RE brokers in this town are worthless as they won't volunteer much info or guidance, I say this as a former Calif RE broker with 50 agents, 2 offices, Realtor past president, etc. 

I would avoid long term rentals right now and stick to travel nurses and Airbnb. I'm in the process of evicting dead beat tenants who stopped paying after the eviction moratorium even though they can afford to pay. Airbnb is much more profitable too as I've had great experience with MD's and RN's as short term Airbnb 3 month tenants. They work a lot so are easy on the properties. 

Good luck, Springfield has some bargains compared to the larger cities in the state at the moment.

Coming from L.A. to Vermont, the RE laws and prop taxes suck... I buy REO's and obsolete municipal properties, so the assessed values vs my purchase prices have huge gaps... i.e. I bought one NH property for 60k that was assessed at over $1 million, the city reassessed it at THEIR appraisal value of $120k so I'm effectively paying about 8% property taxes. Similarly bought a VT property that was assessed at $1mil and the town did reassess the property at my purchase price of $90k but the taxes are about 3% of assessed value. Compared to Calif Prop 13 which was about 1.25% of purchase price.

I didn't know about the VT land gains taxes and yes, tenant laws are very favorable to them. So, I agree, OOS investors need to do their homework.

REO's I usually paid around 20-30% of the area median market values expecting to need major work as many I bought sight unseen. REO's are hard to finance and I paid cash for all my properties. The small cities/towns still haven't rebounded to their previous highs while the big cities have gone nuts.

The big cities properties are very vulnerable to a market crash. Possible reasons could be if Trump loses the election, the r.e. tax depreciation treatment could be changed, rates could rise, capital gains changed, etc. Whereas my properties provide huge cashflows. So while my properties don't see the rapid appreciation, they won't be as vulnerable to changing market conditions, I hope...

Yes, avoid partnerships unless I'm the general partner. So I did smaller deals on my own...I left Calif as the numbers for cashflow properties didn't pencil out to me. 

Right now people are buying based on my "Bigger Fool" theory. The numbers don't make sense, but if they can sell for more to a bigger fool, then it works. But eventually the music stops and someone gets stuck and loses out. A rise in interest rates, stock market or r.e. crash, tax laws change, war... RE goes up and down... So I try to buy low and sell high...

Kelvin I was a 33% partner and we built a new custom spec home in Los Angeles beach area called Marina del Rey. I was the broker, they were the architect and general contractor. They were also partners with each other so I was always outvoted. Plus they controlled the construction money which they refused to provide accounting and kept $60-100k of our partnership money. So no more partners for me.