All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

That's amazing hearing how people "make it work".  Even in the most ludicrously priced area of the country (along with Manhattan!). But it so helps if they are simply rarely there except to sleep.  When you use FB Marketplace its easy to see the poster's culture usually.  I've looked at shared rooms for months in different Canadian cities noting price movement.  Out of probably more than a thousand I've looked at not a single one had a Canadian name or looked like they were born here.  Not a one.  Canadians just spend too much time at home.  :)  Many Indians send money back home to repay people that bankrolled their studies in Canada.  So they work a full time job and go to school full time.  People like that are wiped when they get home and just want to sleep.  Perfect renters!

Also the more people that live there the better ride sharing can work for whoever has a vehicle.  

That's just someone with poor negotiating skills.  Anyone that has sold items privately would have countered any offer.  And before countering had a conversation to try to find out what's really behind the offers.  You'll never get your best deal until you understand what the other side is dealing with.  It's rarely on the surface.  Actually it's almost never obvious.  It's worth investing a few minutes or few hours finding out when so much is on the line. 

This has nothing to do with real estate experience. 

I sold an apartment building and as I lived in the building was always there when my realtor showed it to prospective buyers.  When we did the walk through guess who they asked questions to?  Me the owner or my realtor?  Yes it was me.  What does the realtor know?  He doesn't live in the area, he doesn't live in the building, he doesn't deal with the tenants.  He knows nothing relevant about this purchase.  So they ignored him.  And it sold for more because I was accessible and right there walking with them in their buying journey.  And it was a good investment for them.  And boy did we counter their offers!  Again and again.  

I don't expect you to be Mother Theresa immediately!  You get an operation running well and then you can be benevolent.  Really your advantage is using your legal prowess to better appraise future deals.  And to avoid pitfalls.  You didn't mention what kind of law you're practicing.  Everything would hinge on that. 

But for maximum revenue start with seeing what rooms go for in your area.  The type of rooms students would need or skilled temporary workers, not drug addicts and alcoholics.  Most rooms in America are about 100 sq ft but it may be different there.  Now you have an approximate value per square foot.  Now you see how expensive dining and living rooms are that could be converted.  And libraries and laundry rooms.  In my area 100 sq ft is about $600/month.  So 1 sq ft = $1/month.  So a room used for laundry that is 100 sq ft (quite common) costs the owner about $72,000 over the course of a decade (in today's dollars).  That's a rather expensive laundry room.  Doing this will open your eyes to how people waste space in real estate today.  

Look for discounted run down properties that need renovation and change the layout during the renovation.
Done right 2%/month return on asset value is possible.  Most people are lucky to get 1%.  That means it takes forever to pay off the mortgage meaning you're paying a mountain of interest.  Oh....you can also pay off the mortgage even faster with your ample income or soon to be ample income.  3-5 year payoff time is definitely possible.  Then refinance at 80% and buy a few more and do it again.  And make sure you live in that 1st house so you're close to and can address problems as soon as they appear.  Free accommodation is nice.  

And never let friends or family rent from you.  But there is one exception to this.  Close family that is trustworthy can be valuable because they can be your eyes of a property you don't live in.  You always need eyes on your properties, someone acting as a caretaker.  And you really need to trust them.  They can also collect rent for you.  Sometimes people get paid and if they can pay their rent immediately they will but if they can't they may be tempted to spend it elsewhere.  We all have our temptations.  I managed a low end apartment block for several years.  It was such an advantage to live in the building.  Plus your renters will appreciate it because of your accessibility instead of being some faceless, detached, uncaring landlord.  I once had a guy get behind on his rent.  It was more than a month which for me was horrendous.  We needed some work done and he was skilled and worked for me as he was out of work.  I paid him half and half went to the debt.  Within a few weeks it was done.  I could tell he felt good about it.  He could have just moved out but didn't.  Virtue is impressive.  I told a lot of people about this and I'm sure it got back to him as people were made aware of his character quality.  

I also found that if you pay people cash every day it spurs them to return more reliably.  If you're getting paid cash for rent get rid of it as fast as you can this way without making needless trips to the bank.  And it minimizes theft.  

What you can learn from this and show them can set them up for life.  That's how you care for your friends and family.  By teaching them how to make money instead of offering a crutch.  

Done right just the first house will give the owner the ability to retire for life after the mortgage is paid.  Does again with multiple houses will give you $20k+/month.  

If you've got a family/kids then you'll need more space.  So take a floor for yourself and add a kitchen.  Not so difficult.  Just means the mortgage gets paid off later.  You're still on track.  

Quote from @Jay Hinrichs:

Quote from @V.G Jason:

You don't need a coach; you need to do the research yourself.  Unless you're an idiot, and if you know you're one then stick to something really vanilla like VOO, SCHBB, QQQ, IYY and some T-Bills.

LOL  a softer way to say this is if your simply looking to become a landlord this is a very easy subject to read up on and learn and understand U do not need to pay someone to teach it to you.  buy house  find renter rent house maintain house pray they pay rent and dont destroy it.

And you can be a landlord that gets a very poor return because they haven't utilized their space well by changing the layout. Every area has an optimum room size that will garnish maximum revenue. Renting  rooms is almost always more profitable than renting entire suites or houses. In Winnipeg it's at least 50% more. And you're not renting  rooms to derelicts. It's a shared house so they have no renter's rights giving the owner huge leverage and control.  People even do this in Vancouver though it must be extremely challenging.  

NO house layout is designed for maximum revenue.  None.  Unless you know of a house built with no living/dining room and the basement all chopped up into rooms about 100 sq ft!  Doesn't happen.  

So the best solution is to buy a house needing extensive renovation for cheap and use that discount to change the layout when you bring it up to living standards.  Because buying a house in excellent condition and then totally changing the layout can be expensive, especially if it's involving load supporting walls.  Plus basements always need extensive renovation to make them work for maximum revenue as they're usually one big open space.  

Taking this a step further:  Bring in Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani new immigrants to share the rooms.  They seem to be the only groups that are willing to do this.  And it often works because they are often working such long hours they are almost never home.  Plus very few of these groups smoke or drink so that's other problems eliminated.  We all know of the smoker who "just quit" but resumed or "just smokes outside so that's really not smoking" until it's rainy or frigid and they have the excuse "Well it's miserable out there!  It's just this one time".  Sharing that room will raise bring in 50% more.  50% is good.  How best to do that?  Build sleeping pods that are mostly soundproof (double walled construction) and ventilated.  They are also useful for private phone conversations and could be used for storage of valuables as they could be locked.

I'd love to be able to broach this idea with other nationalities and cultures but it's really hard if they're not working very long hours and have hours of free time at home.  

I think in the future you'll see businesses supplying this type of accommodation for their workers.  It solves the problem of expensive housing, makes the employees available if the business needs them at any time (with overtime benefits) and eliminates the commute.  It's the smart way to fun a business.  Plus at night, many business areas are dead quiet so it's very peaceful.  

Another idea for housing economy if you have an office is to rig your office to live in but not sleep in.  Rather sleep in a trailer or van in the parking lot.  No valuables would be in that trailer/van so there's no theft worries.  This way you are not living in your office because you're not sleeping there.  Mail would go to the office or another location.  Many offices have showers and gyms but if not you'd better have one close by! And you'd be available for emergencies if the business needed you (with nice overtime pay).  

You say you some knowledge in this field.  So tell us in what area you've learned.  Real Estate is a vast subject so to get help we need to know what you want to do and how you want to do it.  "Getting rich" is not an answer.  Be specific if you are genuine.  But as you haven't even bothered to respond here.......

Vancouver:  It would be hard to find a worse location to invest in real estate.  You want lower land cost with high rental demand unless you're a reno expert and flipper which not 1% of real investors are.  Ironically people that tend to be good with reno projects don't tend to be so great with money.  Not sure why.  Just what I've noticed.  Of course there are exceptions.  Like money people that learn about renovations!  Vancouver has high rental demand but about the highest land cost in the country along with Toronto.  But 99.9% of the country is ripe.  You say you're based out of Vancouver yet your profile says Seattle.  Try to invest where you live so you're close to your investment.  Things will go wrong and you want to address them fast.  

As for Alfonso, the website is one of the most UNdescriptive scammy sites I've ever seen.  Nothing but "pump you up" mindless enthusiasm with nothing showing they have any semblance of knowledge.  The sure sign of empty promises.  You're probably a shill for Alfonso posting here to get suckers.  And of course you vaporize and can't even respond because it was for nothing.  

The only reason anyone would want to live in NYC and pay the astronomical accommodation prices there is because you're making a ton of money there.  But 50k is not a ton of money so this doesn't make sense.  I'm guessing you live there for other reasons.  You should travel and then you'll see how awful it is.  Can you work online?  Can you work elsewhere and make a similar amount of money but pay a fraction of NYC prices?  Condo fees are substantial and are usually 1-3% asset value which hugely hurts your money picture.  Sure you don't have to do maintenance but maintenance is simply not that much in a house, hence their popularity.  Condos are for old people that are dying and don't want the maintenance worries.  

House hacking is simple: You need to rent out the vast majority of your space and occupy only a small percentage.  You'll never get good advice from real estate professionals who think aggressive house hacking is renting out one side of a duplex.  Wow, how creative.  I can't believe the comments on here.  Look at my other posts to see how far you can go with this concept of maximizing rental  income.  You have to convert all space that could be rented to rentals. So you won't have a living room, dining room, etc.  They'll be rentals.  So most of your space is rented.  A lot of people live free this way as long as rental demand is high in their area so they can fill a vacancy in a few days instead of a few weeks or months.  You can do the same with commercial space.  

Buy the biggest lot you can find.
Build the biggest footprint you are allowed.  Forget parking.  Parking is not your friend and just announces to the neighborhood every person coming and going.  Try to rent to people without vehicles.  
Build the most square footage you can in that footprint (deepest and tallest).  Forget having a yard.  
Build small rooms because they pay more.  Soundproof them well to give renters privacy and freedom when on the phone.
And do this without contravening any zoning laws.  

A mortgage payoff in 5 years at these interest rates is indeed possible.  Do it again after refinancing that property and buying a few others and you'll have about 20k/month at today's money pouring in.  Retire in splendor.  10 years of sacrifice of space is all it takes.  If young people understood these concepts it would revolutionize rentals because a lot more units would come on the market offering way more selection (yes at a reduced price after a while but it wouldn't be much because people are lazy and stubborn and wouldn't embrace this much) and they could be financially free, really free, in just a decade.  All they need is a small down payment to get started.  

Personally I feel it makes more sense to build because houses are just not designed for this very well.  Parents want to know everything about their children so they don't want soundproofing. They love open concept but we hate it because it wastes so much space.  Rooms need to be a set size for rentals; smaller rooms always rent for more money per sq ft (99% of the time with moderate rentals).  No space can be wasted.  Better to build from scratch or buy a wreck that is cheap and rebuild it the way you want.  

Realize that a lot of this hinges on the basement.  You just have to have a basement.  Fortunately many houses come with an unfinished basement as an afterthought and the sellers are clueless as to the value lying there.  Often you can put in 6 units in a basement.  That is huge!  All you need is a 7' or higher ceiling.  Unfortunately underpinning or lowering the basement floor is one major operation and very expensive.  Just buy a house with a compatible basement.  Of course if you're building....you get things right from the start.  I think the payoff would be worth it.  Plus then it's new and lasts trouble free for decades.  That's satisfying just on it's own.  So many houses are maintained with the lowest imaginable standards then renovated to hide the lousy work.  

One challenge when building small units is bringing in natural light as they tend to be long and narrow.  

For managing space the loft bed/desk is crucial.  Otherwise the bed just takes up way too much space.  Most are designed for children but this page shows a lot of different designs. duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=loft+bed+desk&iax=images&ia=images  Keep in mind most of these are displayed in rooms with ceilings way higher than 8'.  You can make this work with an 8' ceiling; you just won't be using a thick mattress.  Being able to put the bed on a pulley system to raise it to the ceiling during the day would be possible of course.  

Quote from @Chris Davidson:

@Account Closed Look outside the numbers. While REI is a lot of numbers it also includes real people who make really irrational/rational decisions. While optimizing space and packing people in house might make financial sense, it goes against societal norms. You would expect higher vacancy, repairs, and management cost. While you might find someone who would stay there, it might not be the tenant you want.

While people hate how much things cost, I feel most people aren't ready to up end their lives and go back to dorm/ communal living. There is likely a market for it but not on as large of a scale as traditional multi family.

This is definitely a live in situation.  The more people get packed in the more carefully it needs to be managed and bad people extricated as fast as possible.  The owner has to be there.  It would work for a young single guy, a people person who is good at smoothing things over and calming people down.  If he was larger than average that would help in psychologically determining authority.   Every little bit helps.  Now the owner can take up as much space as they need of course.  They could also live in a large trailer or shipping container on the property if zoning allows it.  But I'd prefer to be in the house so I can hear when things escalate so I can defuse them as soon as possible.  In a large situation 2 kitchens might be utilized and this would be invaluable for people trying to avoid someone else.  They could agree to use separate kitchens for a while allowing things to calm down.  

I've seen some very clever micro kitchen setups from China, Japan and Korea recently as they try to make do in smaller living quarters. We would be wise to emulate that if zoning allows it.  The less people mix the less chance of tensions arising.  

Another options is to encourage the use of the outdoor space.  Wouldn't someone rather work on their computer outside in a yard than in a tiny room?  Yet I never hear of this either.  

You don't mention air.  Where is fresh air coming in?  Is there a window?  Doesn't sound like it.  If not does it have air circulation through the house's air ducting system? 

Another problem may be noise from the kitchen.  Kitchen's are surprising noisy with dishes and pots clanking and clamoring, cutlery being dropped, machines being used.  Plus people talk in the kitchen.  You could soundproof the door though which would be wise.  Tenants that don't sleep well won't feel good there.  You don't want that.  Consider a loft bed where its situated on top of a desk to save space. 

What about a fire exit?  If you don't live there that is way more dangerous.  You do NOT want to risk someone dying for any amount of money.  There must be 2 exits out of any room. 

Want to maximize your income? Figure out the optimum room size for your area. Its probably about 80 sq ft but every area is a little different with a different demographic. Once you have that focus on chopping up your space to those size of rooms. Think of how much money most house hackers get out of a smaller, say 2000 sq ft place with an unused basement. It's pathetic, often 2 bedrooms at $500 and the living room at $600 because its a little bigger and nicer. They could do so much better if they redid the layout. Even at 100 sq ft each one should be able to squeeze out 8 rooms at least and still have a 2 toilets, 1 bathroom and an ample kitchen for everyone. 8 x $500 or so is mighty great for such an investment in an area with relatively low land costs (say $150,000 - $200,000). Now you're getting 2-3% a month return. That is something almost nobody outside of STR's gets with a fraction of th work involved. Converting to STR's will double or triple your income in some areas.

Hallways and stairways waste space so really try to minimize them.  Find out about egress laws for basement units.  A private entrance will add 10-20% to your rent.  Plumb it and add about 20% more.  Ideally each would have a tiny kitchen that is modular and customizable for their needs so that big kitchen mentioned above could be eliminated and 2 more units added.  People like privacy so a RV type toilet that can be emptied could be used in each suite. 

Obviously this is for single people only!

Quote from @John Morgan:

Quote from @Account Closed:

Quote from @John Morgan:

@Jonathan Feliciano

I did this 4 years ago and cost me 8k to convert a 1 car garage into a bedroom and full bathroom. I get an extra $200/month for it in rent. So after about 4 years or less I made up for the cost. I’d say go for it. And I’ve bought 3 properties that had them already converted into an extra bedroom. I’d rather have more bedrooms and the demand is much higher for more rooms obviously.

What were you renting the garage for (for parking a car I assume)?
What are you getting for the renovated room and bathroom?
Because in most cities the difference between the two would be a lot more than $200.  So I'm curious.  

 I was renting the house for $600/month before the rehab. I was about to list the house for $1200/month as a 3 bedroom with a one car garage. But decided to convert the one car garage into a bedroom with full bathroom. Then I asked $1400/month since I converted it to a 4 bedroom. An extra $200/month goes a long way for me. It’s now rented for $1500/month and market rent is probably $1700. Converting the garage gave me a much bigger pool of good long term tenants to choose from. I bet this family stays there for many years. Affordable 4 bedrooms like this aren’t easy to find near me in Ft Worth. 

I cannot understand your thinking doing that.  This is all wrong.  First of all you convert the living room, dining room, etc to bedrooms in the house.  The only shared area should be the kitchen and bathroom(s).  So your 3 bedroom becomes 4, 5 or 6 bedrooms.  Does it have a basement?  This should be chopped into small rooms as well.  But the garage should be so obvious!  This should be self contained, rented out separately.  $200?  How about $1000?  Or $700 if you're in a lousier area.