All Forum Posts by: Frank Oudheusden

Gary,

Welcome to the site. There are lots of people on here who invest in the Rochester, NY area (myself included). Feel free to poke around. Glad to see more WNY people coming onboard.

-Frank-

I subscribe to some personal finance blogs to try and learn new tricks and tips for squeezing as much water from my paycheck rock as possible.

This morning I received an e-mail subscription for this blog and low and behold its about real estate investing a 4-plex. The fundamentals in this purchase were missing and unfortunately I think it's cash flow negative.

I wrote a nice blog response using the numbers and explaining items he could do to reach cash flow neutral (splitting the utilities, advertising on craigslist, reviewing his property management contract, etc) and my post (and 40 min of my time) were deleted.

I have a polite e-mail submitted to the author for discussion but we'll see what comes of it. I guess he just likes the victim responses he's getting on this post. Someone is discussing having 7 rentals that made them $5k in a year (combined) before mortgages! How property managers are high-way robbers that made twice as much as them last year! How they just get fed up with the constant repairs and bills of owning money pits!

ugh so much education needed.

http://retireby40.org/2013/10/pondering-exit-rental-properties/

I've used Listsource.com to pull all the property information within my target market area. Within this area I can isolate all the owner-occupied and rental properties.

I have targeted a specific duplex across the street from a property I've purchased within the last year. The outside looks great (high-hopes for the inside) and it's the largest duplex in the targeted area (2x 4BR apartments, 1000 sqft each) and includes a detached garage.

I was able to pull the owner information from the county website and through a quick Google search have found the owners current home (4 streets over from this property) and their phone number.

Is targeting a specific property like this naive?

Is this fishing for a single fish in an entire ocean?

This property isn't on the market but I'd like to call them and discuss the possibility of them selling it, how does this conversation normally go?

Welcome Jason,

I'm an RIT alum (Manufacturing Eng 2008). I invest in the Rochester, NY area remotely from my home in Maryland. There are plenty of RIT/Rochester people here on BP.

Welcome!

-Frank-

Meg,

I recently purchased my first property in the Rochester, NY area and it has done quite well for me. I took me 3 months to find it via MLS e-mailings and I needed to act upon it almost immediately. It's a very fast market for the decent areas. You could be having a couple problems.

1. Your agent may not be prepared to act on your behalf at the speed the market requires. I went through two agents before finding my current one.

2. You may be looking at areas that are very well developed already and may not offer cap rates and purchase prices in line with your expectations.

3. You're cap rate expectations may be too high. Low-income areas offer the highest cap rates so if that's the guideline you gave to your agent that may be the only stuff that fits your criteria.

PM me and we can discuss the Rochester market in further detail.

-Frank-

Hey Chris,

Welcome to BP. I invest in Rochester, NY as well. Good to see more Rochester people on here.

-Frank-

@Mehran Kamari

I think wise investor do all three of the things you suggested. While buy and hold may be your personal preference (it is also mine) knowing about other investment vehicles will let you ride you cycles where it's not plentiful in the buy and hold arena.

I think you could do several things with the cash:
- pay down your current mortgages faster and save on interest payments you didn't spend.
- fix up current properties to obtain higher rent (ROI on a $10,000 kitchen would be in direct rent increase?)
- Put some cash in with a hard money lender and get a nice return?
- Invest with someone reputable who does flipping?

I will always be looking for deals in my market, even if I don't have the money. If nothing else you'll notice when prices go up or down and it will help you keep your pulse on your area.

If you still have cash leftover and you're looking at other investment vehicles the old mantra of "zig when everyone else zags" comes into play. You should always be thinking of changing your investment strategy since the market changing is the only constant in investing.

What investment gets cheap when mortgage rates and home values are higher?

-Frank-

Everyone,
Thanks so much for the information. I plan to tackle this sometime over the next 3-6 months when my repair budget will have enough to cover a decent portion of it. I'm going to have a waterproofing company come and quote it out (they inspect for free normally) and take it from there. Glad to know what I'm getting into.

Hey everyone,

I just bought my first SFH in April. When it rains I get some water in the basement. The puddles cover approx 50-60% of the floor and are normally 1/2" deep. It's walk-able with boots on.

I have gutters on the home, the front one dumps pretty far away from the foundation (5' or so) and the back downspout goes into a pipe which runs through the basement and dumps into my main drain and runs out to the street.

The grading on the house isn't the best but I'm not on a hill anything extreme.

The water seems to be coming up through the floor.

I'm assuming this will require a french drain system but am looking for alternatives or advice on the matter. Any idea what the cost of this would be?

Basement footprint is approx 20' x 40'

-Frank-

Warren,

I am also an out-of-town investor who is buying in Rochester, NY. Good to see you on the forums.

-Frank-