All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Becky Y. welcome! First, if you are looking for landlord friendly city stay out of king county. We live in Seattle and invest in Everett and a big reason for that was to get into a more landlord friendly environment.

You should have no problem finding a property that matches your criteria in Snohomish County but what purchase price are you looking at? You could easily cashflow $1000/mo with a $1M property but I doubt you want to spend that much.

I would start by figuring out your long term goals (cashflow vs appreciation, etc) and then looking at lots of properties and figuring out what you like and what you don't like. Good luck! It's like a real life game of Monopoly and I love Monopoly!

@Timoteo Guy I've outsourced most of our paid laundry service to WASH laundry. They are third party service that installs, maintains and collects coins from their own machines in your building. Then send you a check every month. Of course they take a high % of revenue but it is hassle free. Once a machine breaks in an existing building we outsource the service to them.

@Cameron Brulotte on the surface it sounds like a pretty solid plan. Devil is in the details of course and you may have a tough time finding a decent property in this competitive market using an FHA loan (3.5 down). I am a huge fan of fourplexes for starters because it allows you to maximize the number of units you can get with your limited number of conventional loans.

@Chadd Chase nope, never bought anything down there. I took a couple trips to Aberdeen / Grays Harbor and Longview where the numbers were enticing but wasn't thrilled with the future outlook of the area. We stuck to the Everett market where there is a very nice mix of appreciation and cashflow and a few years later, I am glad we made that decision. I will leave the Grays Harbor market to @Brandon Turner and the Longview market to @Michele Fischer 😀 They can both give you a ton of insights to those markets though if you have more questions. 

 BOOM! That's what it takes. I know so many folks that never take that jump and all the while sit back and ask me "How did you do it"? I just jumped in and never looked back myself. 9 multi-family buildings later we are looking into a 12-unit to help really jump us to the next level.

Welcome to the forum and cheers my friend!

As long as you can get a mid to high 6 proforma cap I think it would be worth it but if rents are close to topped out I would pass.

@Corey R. mgmt fee seems a smidge low because of turnover costs but repair and capex are super conservative (IMO) so you should be more than okay. 

I know the place you are looking at and it was listed a year ago for $600k less and didn't sell. I am not sure why they listed it so high a year later. Over priced in my opinion but it is a solid building in a decent location. If you can make the numbers work for what your criteria is, I am very bullish on the Everett market as a whole and think it would be a solid investment.

@Corey R. Mid- High 5's to maybe 6 for something within Everett city limits. Of course it varies based on the size of the building and what vacancy factor, mgmt expenses and repair/capex expenses you are using too.

@Joe A. congrats on getting something under contract. Hopefully your inspector has experience with multi family buildings because if he is only a primary residence guy he may have you running for the hills based on his report or asking for $75k in "repairs" and kill the whole deal. 

Section 8 tenants are a bit of a mixed bag. If they are in place they are relatively easy as the units have passed the housing authorities inspection already and will just have to be reinspected annually. We have several existing section 8 tenants and the rent comes on time guaranteed every month. We don't rent to new section 8 typically because units need to be upgraded with minor fixes and tenants don't meet our renter requirements with credit and so forth usually. Good luck!! 

Ps- I am a fan of self managing for the first one to get your feet wet and know the process. It is a lot of work though....

@Jacob Wyatt a buddy of mine dug out his crawl space, raised the house and put in a gorgeous 1200 sq ft 2/1 in the basement. He did all the digging, lifting and concrete with him and an experienced friend and then brought in other friends/professionals for the rest. That was 3 years ago in the central district and it cost him around $85k.