All Forum Posts by: Elise Bickel Tauber

Hi Bagus! I just sent you a DM. Pittsburgh is a great market and I highly recommend talking with as many people as you can about the market here. Let me know if I can help!

 If you are able to and want to go the more traditional safe way, I'd highly consider house hacking. Like @Liam Tennies said. It's a really great way to get started with little down. I've done this with a lot of clients and they've been very successful. Not everyone I work with though wants to or can house hack. Something I've been doing with my clients a lot recently is creative financing. There is always the hard money route. I also have some great lenders that have creative products. There is a colleague of mine who has been going the owner financing route. He picked up something like a dozen properties last year with very little down. He is planning to refi out of them when either the interest rates drop significantly (if they do) or when the property would re-fi at 60-70% of the owner financed amount but he does have a 30 year loan with the owners so if he wants to keep that option forever he can. Let me know if you want any creative options or just wanna chat!

I used a company called MRE and they were fantastic! I can share their info if you are interested!

Hey Justin! This is one of the most asked questions I get from my newer investors who are holding rentals. This is a tough one. So i've been an investor and real estate agent for a while and here is what I've seen work.

1. When screening, you need to have the same process across the board. I don't look at credit scores that much because they are easily changeable (like can be made to look a lot better then they should be lol). I do make sure we have 3xs the rent income or 1 years rent in savings. Also we heavily look at residential and employment history. If you have a lot of job hoping then there will be disruptions in their pay which means disruptions in their rent payments to you (more times then not). You are looking for more character references then anything. Never and I mean NEVER trust a landlord reference. Some of my best landlord referenced tenants have been my biggest nightmares. Either they lie about the contact info and have a friend talk them up or the landlord is just so desperate to get rid of the tenant they say whatever they need to do get them out. Really look at their employment and rental history and the rest should fall into place

2. You need to prequalify them a little before showing. We have 4 full time agents on staff and even with that we are often booked. The worst thing you want to do is show a place, they love it, and then you find out they can't move in for 4 months or they want to move in immediately and you have a tenant in there until the middle of summer. Make sure you check move in date, pets, and give a general overview of requirements for your application to make sure they meet it. They could lie but more often then not tenants will let you know upfront about any potential issue for the app.

3. Co-signers can be included in the eviction but they need to live in the same state. At least where I am in Pittsburgh, if the co-signer lives out of state i either cannot do anything or do very little to hold them to the eviction and repayment. A very well qualified co-signer will not want the hit on their credit or the potential garnishment of wages if something goes wrong

4. This has been the biggest thing we have been struggling with. You do not want to loose momentum in the market but you also don't want to waste your or anyone else's time. We give the approved applicant 48 hours to sign the lease and pay deposit or we put it back on the market until they do. During that 48 hour window we tell all other applicants we are scheduling for 48 hours or more past to allow time for the applicant to sign and if they do, we will call you back to cancel. This also lets them know if they end up being the applicant that has the time limit put on them, you aren't joking around. You will keep scheduling.

5. Zillow and facebook market place are still the best.

Hope that helps a little. If you ever need anything feel free to reach out!

Anything with the exterior in my opinion. Mainly because of all the extra work you have to do to keep an eye on weather and tarp etc. As long as you have utilities on, you can do a bathroom/kitchen remodel any time of year but the exterior...not my favorite lol

To start, was this a good tenant that is now exhibiting out of character behavior or is this a habitual late/non payer? That is a huge difference on how to handle in my opinion. If this is a good tenant that just isn't responding and not paying then maybe something is wrong. Maybe do an occupancy check to make sure the tenant is still there (and alive. Sorry if thats gruesome). You could also check with an emergency contact if it's completely out of character. Last year I had a tenant who always paid on time and was super friendly not pay and not respond and turns out they had a stroke and were in the hospital. I would have felt horrible if I had filed eviction on her. 

If this is a habitual late payer or bad tenant, or if your search above doesn't turn up anything, then I default to this...

What does your lease say? In PA the landlord tenant law states that unless you have it in writing, like a lease that states otherwise, you need to give 10 day notice to quit prior to filing eviction. Our lease waives that 10 day notice to quit so I would immediately file eviction. The tenant will either show up and then you can at least get some communication as to what is happening or they wont show up and you can file possession.

Hope everything turns out ok!

Are you over in Philly area or Pittsburgh? I'm over in Pittsburgh and there are a lot of great deals here both for rentals and flips.

Are you doing a DSCR loan on this?

I agree with everyone that seems really high.

I usually see this around $300-$600.