All Forum Posts by: Elenis Camargo

@Toree Barnes Happy that it was able to help! Best of luck :)

@Tom Ott Thanks! Totally the plan  :)

@Matt Leber Awesome to hear that it's not as rough there as everyone says!! I have a property in 32209 and it's been working out well. And so true, if you can learn with the lower income neighborhoods and make it, then the others will be a cinch  :)  glad it's been working well for you. 

Yes!! We were going to go to Orlando but we are having our first baby a month before so thought okay lets wait haha we are going to a November game. Anyways I'll keep in touch once we move down there. Would love to meet you and your wife as we all have a lot in common  :)  I'll send you a PM with my contact info so we can keep in touch in the meantime.

@Chris Babcock Thanks for reading!! I found a great PM but I only wanted him to get my a new tenant then have him hand over the property to me to self manage. I chose one that I got as a referral but I interviewed about 5 of them via a set of questions I sent via email as well as on the phone. The referred one ended up being the best choice. But yes, besides getting new tenants placed, I manage everything else myself. 

@Matt Leber Amazing on the duplexes!! Which areas are they in? We want to get into multi-families next but have notices most of them are in the lower income areas of Jax.

At first I thought "inherited tenants are great!!" but after the third set I'm seeing it's MUCH better to place your own tenants. Happy to see you got the problem resolved quickly. I think it's totally worth it rather than dragging on the annoyance and issues with the inherited ones. You use a PM for all your properties? Or just the ones in Jax?

We plan on moving to Jax next year and getting Gator season tickets  :)  do you ever go to the games? Maybe we can all catch one together sometime!

@Pearly Tan Thanks so much! 

I was lucky enough to find a contractor I could trust completely. I know it's a rare find. I met him a few months before using him here on BP and we spoke for a while. Then I ended up needing him unexpectedly and he saved me. He is a like-minded investor and also works on rehabs for other investors. When we met and spoke we both trusted each other. He didn't even ask for a deposit when I did the rehab. I managed that by working closely with him through phone calls and texts. He would text me pictures and keep me posted on the progress. When he ran across unforeseen issues, he texted me the picture and then called. Of course if you end up with someone untrustworthy then it is very hard to have it running smoothly. I would say gather a list of questions and interview several contractors. What I did to find my rental agent is that I emailed a list to several people and saw how detailed their responses were, if they were willing to talk on the phone, if they had listings to share, etc. Then from there after a few conversations I picked one. The same with the handyman. I looked on Craigslist for a handyman and texted about 5 of them. They all replied and I emailed them a list of things to give me a quote on. Only one replied!! He's the one I'm working with now. You'll quickly be able to filter out the bad people when you make them work for your business. If you just call them and give them the work then it's too easy for them. If you make them work up front by answering questions then you'll filter out the bad ones  :)  Hope that helps some!

With any standard maintenance issues, that's a bit easier. I have built a list of contacts I have worked with like plumber, handyman, electrician, etc. and call them whenever a tenant reports something.

@Matt Leber So awesome! Go Gators!!! How are your properties going?

@Jimmy Deringer Thanks!! You invest in Jax also?

@Eric L. Thank you so much for catching that! It looks like I had a typo. I checked our original model and yes, the correct cash-on-cash return is 14.7%. I went ahead and updated the article right away! Our expenses do include what you listed plus a bi-annual AC checkup/cleaning and for this one property is includes lawn maintenance as well. The other properties we have the tenants paying for lawn on their own. Thanks again for double checking our numbers and catching my typo  :)

@Matt Wahidi Thanks so much! I'm so happy to hear it helped you in some way. No, it definitely was not random. My husband and I are originally from South Florida and went to college in Gainesville, 1.5 hours away from Jacksonville. My sister lives in Jax and we have a close friend who's a realtor there. Those are not really reasons for investing but here are just a few why we chose that city:

We started hearing that big companies were moving to Jacksonville, bringing higher paying corporate jobs and causing more people to move there as well. Florida's real estate market is also getting stronger, as more people are moving there to get away from the cold. Cities like Miami, Tampa and Orlando are saturated. Jacksonville is not, yet, and is the biggest city land wise in the US. We also constantly examine the Jacksonville market. One of the many ways that we do this is by looking at Jacksonville's median income growth rate relative to the national income growth rate. Jacksonville is being forecasted by top analysts to grow at a much higher rate than the nation as a whole. I don't have these numbers in front of me right now but I can provide them to you if you'd like this week. We are constantly keeping up with the market and trends in that area to make sure it's still a good place to invest. 

Happy to answer any other questions you may have. Feel free to send me a PM  :)