All Forum Posts by: Lacie Morris

A good general contractor is worth their weight in gold. It took us forever to find a good one. As you may be figuring out, half the battle is finding someone who will show up and do the work when they say they will. Most contractors are super flaky.

We have a wonderful guy that we work with now and we make sure to treat him well. It's a relationship that you are building with them. He will go out of his way to make sure we are taken care of, and we are able to keep him busy with all of our projects for at least half of the year. 

As an aside, I think you mentioned earlier in the thread that this is your second deal. So you are still a beginner. I don't know if I'd ever recommend a full scale project like this one that you seem to be describing to a beginner. We just started tackling projects like that a couple of years ago and we've been doing this for over a decade. It's so easy to jack up everything with a major project. Have you actually bought this project? If not, I might strongly reconsider doing this deal.

If you did buy it, something to consider would be to ask if you can work alongside the contractor you hire. You have to be willing to work and let the GC lead you on things, more like a gopher helping them grab tools. A lot of times it's nice to have an extra hand on the job. We did that in the early years, it saved us money and we got the job done right. Plus, we were able to learn skills so we still do most of the little issues that come up ourselves. Another benefit is that you will know if a job is done right and that you won't get screwed over by a shady contractor in the future.

Ok so here's my opinion and some people may not like it. There is a reason that these hucksters are making so much money. It's because of lazy people. Human nature is such that we want to have riches fall into our lap and not have to work for it. They sell because they say all of the things that lazy human nature wants to hear. The no money down, flip and make millions thing is selling...because people buy it. If they actually told people that you will have to bust your but and you may be crying your eyes out while scraping old shellac off of hardwood floors on your hands and knees (true story, haha), I'm not sure how much they would sell. 

I think it's also the fault of us real investors that we don't shed enough light on the day to day of what it really takes. There is a reason that those that stay in this game long enough are successful. It's because most quit when they realize they'll have to work. I'm trying to make a much better effort on educating people that ask me about it, and try to be brutally honest with the ups and more importantly, the downs.

@Karlyn Brasselmon. So sorry that this happened to you! But I'm glad that you figured it out before it was too late. Good for you for recognizing that it was strange for him to want your contacts. Don't give up on real estate because of this. It can work, and you are capable! You just need to put some more time in to hone your instincts. 

What if you did a combination? You could set aside x money to pay down debt and x to go toward a downpayment/repairs/whatever else on your first rental property? My husband and I did a combination of this a while back. We accumulated a bit of credit card debt (not much, maybe $8K) and we would pay $500 extra a month on that debt and put $500 towards investments. I will say that the $8K was moved to a interest free credit card for 18 months, so we didn't have to worry about interest. But that way we were paying down debt AND moving forward with some investing. Just an idea :) Best of luck to you!

@Mark Smith I agree with some of the others on here. You need to self manage your first few properties. You need to know the ins and outs that way when you do hand it off to someone else, you know what to look for and know if they are managing it properly. Not to mention the fees will probably eat up all of your profit. We have over 30 places and are just know getting a property manager. You don't have to wait that long, but here, the property management company will take 10% of the rent every month plus first month's rent. If you are doing multi-unit places the turn over is high, once a year is typical. 

As far as grass goes, we hire an older high school kid to mow all of the lawns. It saves us time and contributes to a young kid earning a living. You could do the same in the winter I guess, but we don't do anything for snow removal here in the winter. I don't think we get near as much snow as you might though.

I live in a small town as well. I think being a landlord in a smaller town is the best! There are some tricks to renting it to the right people, but don't get scared away from investing because of it. Good luck to you!

@Account ClosedIf you don't have access to the MLS, you can do zillow.com or homes and land. Homes and Land is the magazine that they put in grocery stores and convenience stores that have property listings. Just go on every day for a few minutes. You can also set up alerts on Zillow for certain criteria I believe. How far is Reading from Pittsburgh? I don't think I'm too far south of you, maybe like 3-4 hours.

@Kim Rose

Ok so a couple of things here,

I love the idea of investing in a place that has Military and college students. I think it's great for rentals. 

I try to buy the worst house on the block, but then I fix it up. My rule is that I will not rent a place out to people that I wouldn't live in myself. So I love crappy houses, but I redo them up to a decent clean standard. I'm a simple person and don't need a palace, but it also has to be a nice decent place. If you have a crappy place, expect crappy tenants :)

Don't do an investment based on what a property "could" appraise for in the future. Do the numbers work now? Will you be making cash flow now (with the money added in for repairs)? If not, don't do it. Yes, your property will probably appraise for more in the future, but I just count that as a bonus. Don't bet everything on that.

Now I think you have something here, when you were mentioning that you rented for a while but had a hard time finding a place because you have pets. We actually do have quite a few places that we rent to people with pets. It's kind of an untapped market in our area. The good thing is that people with pets are willing to pay a bit more because they know it's hard to find people who want to rent to them. We have had some really great tenants with pets! 

The downside is of course that pets can DESTROY your place. It is a risk. Typically though, my opinion is that it's the owners that are bad not the pets. You have to do a good job of screening your potential tenant and really go with your gut. 

Excited for you and your real estate journey!

Get on your local MLS and just start researching every day. See what comes up and start to notice patterns. Go look at property in person, and start to develop what you think your criteria will be for purchasing. Don't buy anything right away. Take a little bit of time and look and analyze; gather information. Think of it like a part of your education. It's fun.

@Mark Kao Have you thought of buying property with some friends? My husband and I had a few properties of our own, but then decided to form a group with 3 other people (his brother and 2 close friends). We have been able to do so much through that group that we wouldn't have been able to do on our own. Not to mention the fact that you can split up the workload to make it more manageable for everyone. Something to consider :)

I like what one person said above about the low barrier to entry into becoming a real estate agent, and I think that can be true for a good majority of the agents, in our area at least. It's not always that they are bad people, but that they don't take the profession seriously. They see it as a hobby, as something fun to do. It can be fun, but you need to treat it as a business. 

The next tip that I would give is that when you become a real estate agent, you need to realize it's a long game. What I mean by that is that it is probably going to be years before you see some serious success. My husband is an insurance agent (started his own agency with a partner) and they have been doing it for 6 years, and it seems like just in the past year or two have things really started to move quickly for them. It took a while for people to want to do business with them, because there is such a huge turnover in insurance agents in the first couple of years. I think that's the same with real estate agents. People aren't sure about you the first couple of years, but once you've been around for a while and show you are committed people see that and take note. Best of luck to you @Jerusha Holder!