All Forum Posts by: Eric F.

How many months after you list a house and it doesn't sell do you guys buy it yourself? After all, you recommend the listing price and tell them you can help sell their house. 

Are you working with a realtor? If not, I don't see why you would need a realtor but for sure use an attorney. I have bought inherited houses directly from sellers with no realtor and I closed with an attorney. Don't start measuring for drapes yet, I have had multiple inherited houses fall apart due to title issues. If there is truly only one heir then it is much easier. I have never had luck with multiple heirs. One person always decides they can fix it and sell it themselves, which is fine and their right, but usually it just sits there because no one takes ownership.

"1. Turnkey Out of state: Buy 6 $100K ($25K down on each) SFR in the Midwest that cash flows $200 to $300/mo (long term appreciation in rent/value will not go up much)"

I am curious, how reliable are these investments and numbers? I have never looked hard at turnkey out of state but maybe I should. Especially if I can do like @Jeff Wallenius says and cash out refi to reinvest. If I could do 5, refi after a few months, do 5 again, and cycle through 4 times that sounds attractive, but too easy to be true! 

I'm reading this as marketing it without having it under contract. That is garbage and whoever you contact to market it to will probably figure you don't have it under contract pretty easily. If you get someone else's wholesale under contract and to wholesale it that is garbage too unless you are going to close on it if you do not sell it...and even then I don't like it. 

@Steve Vaughan in retrospect we should have done that. We had no clue what replacing it would have entailed so we did not protect it while painting. You can be sure that lesson was learned!!

@Justin Fox I will be doing that in the future. I went with the Steve Vaughan Habitat Restore method for this one.

@Daria B. Multiple Lowes trips are the bane of my existence. Luckily returns are so easy there when I am in a situation like you described I buy every single possible match. By the time a job is done my return pile is massive but one major trip to return everything beats they heck out of driving there 10 extra times.

I am sure everyone has had this problem once or twice (or 100 or 200 times). We look at a rehab and see a couple of things we believe will be simple to fix but turn out to take 10x more time than anticipated and cost much more as well. Hopefully this thread can save a couple of people from getting caught like I did. Please feel free to add examples. I have two.

I bought a rehab that had a dirty skylight cap. We thought we could just replace the plastic bubble on the skylight. 8 bolts, a new bubble, and we are down the road. How hard could that be? This should take like an hour and cost 200 bucks, right? Opps. We could not find a bubble to save our lives. I called multiple distributors, window stores, etc. We ended up buying an entire new skylight kit + what we needed to install it. Then we had to create a new frame for it to fit. I probably sunk 15 hours trying to find a replacement bubble + the actual cost with labor and everything was probably $900.

My second example is a single replacement cabinet door. We thought it would be easy to match it up and order a new one but it was not that easy. This one did not end up costing me a ton of money but I had to get a “close enough” replacement. My time estimate was way off though. I spent hours trying to find a replacement. Does anyone have a simple way to find a replacement cabinet door if this happens again?

Please feel free to add an example or two yourselves. We all know we've had this happen to us.

I have a different idea that may help. We had people coming to one of my rehabs and night and leaving trash there regularly (at least twice a week). It had to be kids since it was coca cola cans and dorito bags, not beer. Thankfully their damage was limited to a bunch of garbage. Anyway, I bought a security camera setup but realized I needed the internet for it to be worth it. Instead I had a deer trail cam in my truck and we threw that up in a tree about 30 feet off the ground pointing at where the trash was. The camera was probably about 100 bucks and captures video and still shots. I think it has a flash which scared the kids away because they have not been back since we installed it.

A security camera setup needs the internet and if someone breaks in they can just steal the harddrive so it does not do good, especially if you don't have the internet. This deer cam is 30 feet up in a tree so it cannot be stolen easily. It does not need power, internet, wires and is weatherpoof. It time stamps everything so when your workers show up you can see what time they arrived if you want. I did not buy it to monitor anyone doing work but I guess it could serve that purpose from a time on site perspective. 

My first rental will probably be the best deal I will ever do strictly from a cash on cash return basis. I got really lucky. I made 8 signs that said "I buy trailers CASH (919)XXX-XXXX. Total cost 20 dollars. Someone called and said they wanted to sell a 3/2 in a nice park for $9,000, with a tenant in place. The home needed nothing. I bought it for 8k cash + the seller kept the $775 security deposit, so really $8,775 since obviously I have to maintain a security deposit per laws. I've had it for 3.5 years and the only thing I have done is pressure wash it twice and fix the AC once. I make about $375 a month after the lot rent, taxes, etc. The tenant is great and pays on time every month.

This was 100% beginner's luck. I made 8 signs, got a great deal (and another deal off them that was pretty good as well). I thought "damn this is even easier than they say." I've never gotten another deal off the subsequent 700+ signs I have put out (I have since quit signs). Too bad all my deals were not this awesome, cheap, and easy, I would be retired already. 

I had visions of buying 12 trailers a year like this. Damn I was optimistic! 

I guess I used the wrong term. Cost segregation is what we did. 

@Levi T. I do not want to be rude but you have to reassess how you are behaving as a property owner. A landlord does not get to decide for a tenant if a recurring leak is a problem or not. That is not your decision. It is not even a decision. It is a problem. That is a fact. Fix it. Now. Good luck telling a judge "well there is a leak, but only three times, and it isn't that big, so I'll fix it in a few months." Fix it.

If you reread your posts, you are applying a lot of personal feelings to the situation. First, you state she must be doing this because she is having personal problems in her life. You don't know this, and even if she is it is none of your business. If the heat doesn't work it does not work. If the roof leaks then it leaks. The tenant breaking up with their husband, losing their job, finding out their kid is pregnant, none of that changes the fact the heat does not work according to her.

Also, complaining about the dog poop now is doing what you accuse the tenant of doing. Now she is giving your trouble so you are picking out other things not related to the problem at hand to "get even" like when an argument in a relationship starts about something tiny and then the people start bringing up stuff from like 5 years ago. The issue is the heat, not the dog poop. If she did not complain about the heat you would not bring up the dog poop.  This is a business.

Basically your 2 points boil down to 1) the leak is small and you don't want to fix it right now, so you have decided for the tenant it is not a problem and 2) She stated her heat was not working, so first you had a guy, not licensed, go out and he said it was fine but somehow also 2 radiators were broken (interesting definition of fine). This was November 22nd. Your scheduled service is December 19th. So basically the tenant should go an entire month with 2 broken radiators (possibly fixed by your unlicensed handyman) because you decided it was OK. FYI, this is not OK. 

To summarize, quit reading personal feelings into this. You are the landlord and you need to do these three things immediately. 

1) Fix the roof right now. Again, to do lists are for your personal house. This is a rental house. You fix problems immediately. And yes you mentioned it is a small leak multiple times. You can stop mentioning it. It doesn't matter, it is a recurring leak. 

2) make sure the heat is working properly.

3) Stop deciding for your tenants which maintenance issues should be fixed vs put off (hint: They should all be fixed as soon as possible.)