All Forum Posts by: Forrest Williams

If you are planning on selling it at any point, you need permits. A house without permitted work can be a headache to sell, as the city can hold up your closing and nitpick every single thing in the house, whether or not it needed a permit at all. 

You may have to widen your radius or go further back. I would also look up rental averages for comparable units, you can do more of a income analysis that way.

If you are looking to invest in Chicago, I wouldn't overlook the suburbs either. Places like Berwyn and Oak Park can offer great returns for 2-4 units. 

A smaller multi unit is your best bet. Something you can fix up a bit, as well as rent out to pay the mortgage. Push comes to shove, you could get a single family home to fix up and fill it full of roommates. If you are planning on going to college, lots of schools have a rule where you have to live on campus for your first year. You can use that as a opportunity to save up money for your down payment and make some friends you can rent your future place to.

Venmo, and some of my tenants are on income assist so quarterly checks as well.

Get quotes from fire damage specialists in the area. The square footage calculation won't help you much. Depending on the size and heat of the fire, you could be dealing with lots of unseen damage as well.

If you're just starting out, you can use something as simple as Excel or google sheets to keep track of income and expenditures. I self manage my properties, and that's my preferred method. Sheets is easy, free, and has all the functionality I need. The hardest part for me initially was remembering to update it. Now I update after every purchase so I don't forget.

 You could absolutely do that. It can be a selling point if other similar rentals aren't covering utilities. I used to work for a property management company that charged tenants a $10/mo fee to cover furnace filters. That was an easy $100/yr for them.

@Ben Feder keep utilities in their name. If you have the electricity in yours and they don't pay you, you're on the hook for the lights. If you stop paying it, they could use that against you in court, creating an uninhabitable apartment. 

If you have a three bedroom situation, it can be a little tricky. If they are all friends, it can be easier to coordinate that and have them split it amongst the three of them, keeping it in their name. If you've done a boarding house situation where you are renting each room individually, I would suggest just paying the utilities yourself. It can create tense situations if someone is using way more water or electricity.

Again, it depends on your lease, but if you don't currently have it in the tenant's name, consider changing your lease next turnover.

It's the tenant's responsibility to set up their utilities, if that's what you have written in your lease. Utility companies won't let you set it up for them. However, make sure to call them when a tenant is moving out to transfer the utilities to your name, otherwise the unit won't have any power when you're showing it to the next potential tenant.