All Forum Posts by: Justin Whitfield

We usually get paid by cash or money order.  We have an office very conveniently located in our town (on Main St.) so it's no problem for the tenants to come in and pay rent at the front desk.  We have a mail slot on the door as well so tenants can drop off rent in a sealed envelope with their address and name on it.

I would be just as happy to have online/auto pay options but nearly every tenant I've dealt with is perfectly happy to bring in cash or money order.

When dealing with contractors I've both used lock boxes and just changing the locks on the front door and giving them a key for the time the work was being done.  If you're worried about the lock box attracting attention, you could go with the latter option, but I've personally never had any trouble with lock boxes.

How much is the rent? If it's not too much you could explain to him you never heard anything about nor received the last month's rent, but offer to pay him half of it back (or even the full amount if you want).

I've offered this to tenants in similar situations and they usually will agree and are happy to get something back.  It could prevent a future headache/legal trouble, which from my own experience, is not worth keeping the rent over.

Late to the post, but hello there fellow Tiger!  I graduated in 2012 and I'm from Anderson - just next door.

I love this area and I love Clemson. I'm hoping to get into some investments in Clemson sometime in the future myself.

My Grandfather built/rented out the "Le Mans" and "University" apartments on College Ave behind the Sonic, so I spent a lot of my time when I was younger in Clemson helping out with the rentals.

It's a good idea to use different avenues for finding properties like FSBO and craigslist, but I would absolutely still use the MLS. The first deal I ever made was a bank REO I stumbled across the day it was listed on MLS. The listing was for 2 small houses and I bought them for $3,500.00 cash. I rented one of them out for 4 months and made $200 cash flow every month, and then sold both houses after those 4 months for a $8,000.00 profit. It was an extremely good confidence booster that I could do a deal like that by myself and turn a nice profit (for me at the time).

Have you done anything with tax liens in Clemson?

Where do you draw the line on excessive/obsessive due diligence?

My family owns an apartment building that has a great rent roll history and has been a great property for years.  Another investor approached us and was interested in buying it, and we have worked with him to get him all the information he needs and got him access for him to personally inspect the property.

Yesterday we found out that he called the fire department to ask about any previous fires at the address, and the fire department told him there had been a fire there 10 years ago (there has not been a fire of any kind in the 35 years my family has owned the building) and worse, they told him that the fire report shows it as being a single family residence (it was officially zoned multi-family years before my family purchased it).

 Next, he called the cities zoning and planning division and asked them about the property and told them what the fire department said. The person from the planning department he spoke with did not know and simply told him "that's probably correct" and then initiated a required building and fire code inspection for the property because of "a fire in the last 10 years with no inspection".

The building completely meets fire code and has all the proper smoke detectors and fire extinguishers with updated tags, so I am not worried.  However, this got me thinking about when is there too much due diligence you can perform? This man has created a whirlwind of issues that literally don't exist.  In fact, the fire department inspected the building 2 years ago as a requirement for getting my insurance renewed, and this didn't show up on the city records.

Thoughts?

I believe the other book he always mentions "Investing in Duplexes, Triplexes, and Quads: The Fastest and Safest Way to Real Estate Wealth" by Larry B. Loftis

I know he has recommended this book on his blog post as well.

This post wasn't about having an excuse and saying "I couldn't/can't do anything because of X". 

I am extremely self-motivated and I have a great work ethic.  Sleep Apnea isn't an excuse, it's a medical condition that I have had to live with and work around.  It is a fact that for the past year at 12:00pm I have felt so tired I could pass out. However, I pushed through it almost every day (except the couple I mentioned I fell asleep at my desk) and grew my business.

It has been a challenge. That's all. The post was simply asking what other things people have struggled with and have found ways to fix them. If I used Sleep Apnea as an excuse and said "oh well, I'm too tired to do anything" I wouldn't be where I am today. I own 8 properties (15 units) and have done many flips. 

I'm not saying I'm perfect by any stretch, but to say I need a shift in mindset and attitude is extremely far off base.

What is the biggest thing so far you have had to overcome?  Did you have doubters that hounded you about the mistakes you were making? Did you have any health or family issues that you had to overcome? Originally I was thinking of this question in terms of in your investing/business life, but our personal lives have such a big effect on our business that they go hand in hand for a question like this.

My story: In 2009 when I was a sophomore at Clemson University, I got Mono (or Epstein-Barr Virus) over Thanksgiving break and I was extremely sick until around Christmas.  I recovered and was fine, but I had a lingering fatigue feeling. I felt very sleepy a lot of times in class and had to fight off falling asleep - even more than from the usual boring class.  

Fast forward to last summer (2014) I got sick again, same symptoms as in 2009 and I'm pretty sure I had Mono (or Epstein-Barr Virus) again, even though I was never officially diagnosed with anything.  

My fatigue worsened after recovering from that bout of Mono and now I was having trouble staying awake during the day - I would wake up at 7:30am and by noon I was tempted to stop working and go home and sleep for the rest of the day. I even fell asleep at my desk a few times. Finally in January of this year I was diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea which through testing, the doctor discovered I stopped breathing and woke up nearly 23 times per hour throughout the entire night. That completely explained why I was so tired - I was never getting anywhere near a full nights sleep! I received the CPAP treatment which I started in late March. It has been amazing. The first few weeks were extremely hard getting used to the CPAP treatment, but now I have so much more energy throughout the day and I don't have a period during the day where I want to go to sleep.

I'm interested to hear some other stories. It's been a huge motivating factor for me to have overcome this obstacle that has been a part of my life for the past nearly 6 years. I finally feel like I should, and its so amazing to feel this way after an especially hard past year.

I look forward to hearing from everyone!

Good ideas with public assistance. I have recommended section 8 for a few of my tenants in the past. Last time I heard there was a long waiting list in my area for section 8 assistance. Hopefully that has changed and some of the tenants can benefit from it.

I had something very similar happen. About 2 months after purchasing one of my apartment buildings, one of my tenants, who was a long term tenant and had lived in her apartment for 10 years before I purchased it, became terminally ill and was admitted to hospice care.  She passed away about 2 weeks after and I did not even find out she went into hospice care until a day before she passed.  It was a tough situation and I definitely recommend, as others have said, getting legal advice for this sensitive situation.

One thing I would highly recommend based on my experience from this happening is to try and check on your rental unit as soon as you can. In the time between my tenant being admitted to hospice and me finding out everything and waiting on her sister to move her possessions, I found out they did not relocate her 2 cats when she went into hospice. You can imagine what the place smelled like after 2 weeks of unattended cats. Check on your rental unit to make sure there's not anything that could cause damage from it being left unattended for a week or so while the family arranges to get everything out.