All Forum Posts by: Peter Nelson

I "don't make money off my tenants".  For me personally, that is a wrong attitude.  It has me thinking that I am using the tenants.  I prefer to think of it as making money from my rentals.  That makes it less personal, and helps me to be a better landlord to my tenants.  

My goal is to provide the best possible housing to my tenants. I do not overkill it. But I am not a slumlord. By providing comfortable, secure homes for my tenants I am able to attract good tenants (that do not trash out the place), who pay market rates and thus maximize my ROI, and by maintaining our properties we avoid costly deferred maintenance issues.

Hi David.  I am a PM in Seattle, and a former foreclosure investor.  There are a couple of options available to you.

The easiest is if you have equity then you can get lines of credit and use that to purchase the real estate with.  That is what I used when I was doing foreclosures 10-15 years ago (before it became the next fad).  But you need lots of equity -- probably a quarter mil or more to be a player.

Next you can get into the hard money.  Most of the foreclosure groups have lenders who will lend you the money, and this is the path of choice for most newbie investors without a ton of equity.  But your margins go down because of the points/rates on the hard money.  But it is better than nothing.

Next you can bird dog.  You can go out and find deals and lock them up and them sell them to investors and build your cash that way.  But this takes a LOT of work and also a certain knack for finding deals and working them.

After that there is a list of 'creative financing' -- buying paper and stuff like that.  

Hope that helps.

In Seattle it is a strong market.  We would terminate the lease, upgrade the unit, and lease to some better tenants.  It isn't worth the hassle.  

We would talk to the tenant and tell him to clean it up -- try to get his cooperation. But hoarding is more like a disease and unless you have a cure for it you better not expect much from this approach.  If the hoarding is either a safety issue or a sanitation issue then next up would be to issue a 10-day Notice to Comply.  That might help, but again don't expect much.  In the end you are probably looking at waiting for 4 months and terminating the lease. 

6 - 8 weeks is an acceptable lead time.  Good time to show.  We collect a $500 holding deposit and have the prospect sign an Agreement to Enter into a Lease which holds their feet to the fire.  We tell the tenant the sooner we lease it up the sooner we can leave them alone so when the time comes to move they don't have to deal with showings.

We are a Seattle-based property management company. We need to purchase a good camera and camcorder for taking real estate pictures and videos for both marketing as well as inspection purposes..

What are the important features to look for in each device? Which features are "gotta have" vs. "nice to have"? We're probably looking in the $2-500 range for each. Can we find good (enough) equipment in that range. Do you have any recommendations?

Thank you very much in advance for your help!