All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Travis Washington Welcome to BP!  It's a great site to help you along the way.

The hardwood is beautiful! The dark color is awesome and current and it will be forgiving if you can do touch up the scratches and do recoats of poly as the poly is worn...without doing a complete strip.  At your rent level....keep attracting the best possible tenants.  If you were talking $700/ month....I may say differently....mainly because the wear level would be more risky with lower end.

@Bill Manassero I prefer the south and west in general personally. I've had very good performance from duplexes, but you need to be selective with your location choices in Indy for SFH OR MF. MFs get a bad rap quite often, but I've grown to favor them over SFH as I've worked them. Make sure your PM is good with the area you are choosing. If they can operate effectively in that area and you do your due diligence, that will help performance of the investment. If you are focused on appreciation, you will significantly degrade the ROI% in the short term for sure. I shoot to maximize the current cash flow/ROI and am less concerned with appreciation. To get the appreciation, your choices for areas will migrate further out from the center of town or limit your areas to the "popular" areas that prices are much higher. Most will recommend spending more to get the less risky areas, but I personally try to find the "C+ to B-" areas on the edge of nicer / popular areas. Definitely avoid D areas all together if you are not managing the unit yourself (intown) or have a tough PM that can handle that effectively. You will receive input that the townships are safer/less risky which is true, but also are getting expensive. I don't mind Center Township myself, but I'm on the streets daily and am able to deal with all that come with some of the marginal areas. I can't over stress how much your PM can make/break the performance. Feel free to PM to discuss in more detail.

Below market rent pays off in my opinion with giving you better tenant selection and retention.  Adding some features to the house that increase the value and makes it a special place to live helps also.  I like putting glass tile in the kitchens, ceiling fans, new windows and updated kitchens/baths.

As @Dan Perrott indicated and others, it's managable.  It does require discipline that you can pick up off this site.  Remember you are managing a contract and resposible for the terms of it.  Keep it business like and watch for tenants that start managing you instead of you managing the contract.  Some tenants will want the house rebuilt to their specs and for you to let them slide on payment.  Do use postlets for ads.  

I've witnessed modest improvement where the people get involved and make it happen.  They are able to get greenspaces and make them a wonderful enviorment for their families to gather and enjoy.  They organized a neighborhood watch themselves.  It may be difficult to do but can be done. They actually took back their area and make it a nice place.  When I reluctantly purchased there (at my spouses request) I was skeptical.  There were burned out boarded up homes and over grown lots.  These have since been torn down and parks with garden spaces installed. If you can find some locals and help them understand the resources they have available you could help them make a difference!  It's quite impressive to see when it happens.

Pretty high payment for around $50k in principal?  What are the terms of the loan?

It is surprising how few times tenants "intentionally" trash a house.  It is more likely to happen if a matter was to become "personal".  Try to keep the focus on a contract and not enter into any personal relationship or hint there in.

Those improvements will be good if you plan to use it.  Otherwise they may become "over improvements" in the appraisers opinion and not get much value added when sold.  

I'm not sure which forum this applies to? May post it to a couple to get it right.

I'm considering changing up a leasing strategy to target the short term rental market.

I'm curious if others have experience with this and could offer up advice?

To frame it up a bit, I have around 50 units of 2-4 bedroom units in Indianapolis area...Marion / Hamilton county.

Rents on two year leases range from $500 to $1500 range for the most part. A couple others are high end executive homes.

My initial questions would be?

What premium is available for the shorter terms?

What are the target customers?

What is the best way to target the customers through marketing?

Are there some major employers you could connect with to get to the customers?

Are these customers interested in ONLY premium properties?

What type of properties would the customers want generally?

What other billable services can enhance the arrangement?

Furniture/Maintenace/Cleaning/Moving assistance etc?

Are there some pitfalls to avoid?

Good or bad experiences you could share?

Thanks so much for any info you can share!

George

@Brandon Barnic Great layout!  I love to blast out walls and open up the kitchen.  Raise up the top on the transition into the bar with a short wall and give it a good bar stool height.