All Forum Posts by: Garrett Hogan

@Kevin Cioffi yes we did. Elevator ended up at ~$160k plus another $40-45k to build the CMU block elevator shaft. Went with The KONE MonoSpace 500. 

Id advise you to focus on the kitchen first instead of the bathrooms as that will generate the highest ROI on your investment.

As far as finiding a renter is concerned, in Boston it is customary for the tenants to pay the realtor fee. You'll want to perform credit checks, background checks, eviction checks, etc on the applicants. You can do this thru experian and a whole host of other sites. 

@Russell Brazil I highly recommend Gary Hogan. His office is in Quincy and works with a ton of real estate investors. He's well versed in complex real estate issues such as title, probate, litigation, etc.

His contact info below: 

Gary M. Hogan, Esq.

Baker, Braverman & Barbadoro, P.C.
300 Crown Colony Drive, Suite 500
Quincy, MA 02169-0904

https://bbb-lawfirm.com/attorneys/gary-m-hogan/

Yes, separate kwikset locks for each bedroom. Also, another random thing to consider. Youll want to make sure that the Thermostat is not locked in a bedroom, so that everyone has access to it. 

oh and talk to @ryandossey about Indianopolis. Thats his market and he buys a ton of rental properties there

Israel, my advice would be to buy a multifamily with the most amount of units you can afford for the money you have pending the due diligence checks out obviously. Buying multiple single family rentals are hard to manage, whereas with a larger multifamily, you only have 1 building in 1 location to manage. Also, when a single family property is not rented, the cashflow is 0. If you have multiple units you will still have cashflow, albeit lower than normal. 

Rebekah,

Have done it in Boston. Very management intensive. Hard to mix genders together, which usually means you end up with a frat house full of guys.  Youll want atleast 2 baths per unit if they have 3 or more bedrooms.  Also, plan on getting the unit cleaned atleast once a month minimum, but I'd suggest bi-weekly or even weekly depending on how many people are staying there.

Also, check to see what your cities regulation on rooming houses. You may need to get a special designation depending on the number of bedrooms/people. You're likely going to get a lot of requests from couples too, so figure out how you want to handle that before hand. 

Have you talked to any bookkeeping service about their costs. Its probably less expensive than you think to have it outsourced and run by a company that does it for a living. I talked to a few companies a few months back about this and for my company 2 principals, about 5-10 large flips/developments per year was only about $200/month for them to do the books. 

Yes, absolutely. Just because the house is over the median average, the sellers could have a ton of equity in the house or could be motivated to sell. 

I use the Wolf Classic Line in all of my rental properties. For the cost you cant go wrong, they are solid cabinets and they are Quick Ship so you can get them in a week. Super convenient. 

Ive also Cabinets to Go, IKEA, and some other RTA cabinets. By the time you pay someone to put them together, you've exceeded the cost of getting normal cabinets. With IKEA, you really need to find someone who has the experience and patience to work with them as they are a PITA to assemble. The benefit is they hang on a rail, so once they are assembled they go up quickly.