All Forum Posts by: Harrison Liggett

@Mikel Billstrom

If you can get people to believe in you, you can make anything work. You’ll just need to partner up with someone who can have the mortgage in their name while you do all the work.

@Steve Emling

We’ve actually been running into the same problem here and trying to think of an innovative solution. Depending on how many properties you have, it could be worth looking into something like the Monnit wireless temperature sensor. The pricing is more than fair and you can place these in the basement or cabinets in your units to alarm you (via text and online) when the sensors reach a certain low or high temperature. This can at least give you a sense of which units might have the recurring issue and which ones are insulated properly.

Best of all is that you can easily mix and match these sensors when you want to move them to another property.

@Mandi Martinez

A great way to study the market is to get access the MLS. You can easily look at listings sold in a specific area and in a specific time period. After looking at this type of data for long enough you can gather an understanding about which locations sell higher per sq ft or even which style homes are selling more!

@Steve Emling

I like looking for 2 beds with a high sq footage to convert to a possible 3 bed. We had one we advertised as a 2.5 bedroom because there was only one bathroom and you had to walk through a smaller bedroom to get to it and the right family found it and paid about $125/mo over market for a 2 bed on it but used it as a 3

@Troy Sheets

Thanks for the suggestion Troy! I will be looking more into SimpliSafe today

@Marcia Maynard

Sure! And sorry for the confusion! 

We are thinking the same, might be time to hire someone for that job directly...

We started out doing more flips but more so doing buy and hold mini flip rentals now. Not doing an entire rehab but making them the nicest rentals in the area!

@Mary Mitchell

As previously stated, we use the ‘Kwikset SmartKey’ locks that make rekeying incredibly easy. For those who want to save even more money you can use an older set of keys on an entirely different house.

Here’s a 17 second video showing how:

https://www.kwikset.com/videos/how-to/smartkey-rekey.aspx

@Marcia Maynard

Thank you for the advice! We currently have a little north of 300 units, mostly SFR actually. Most of them are vacant because they are in the process of being rehabbed before being rented. We buy pretty quick..

We do have thermostats in the units and played with the idea of having a wireless system to supervise them from the office but that would require wifi be at all the vacant units which isn't entirely realistic. 

We try to keep the vacant ones at 50 but when we have repair men or contractors moving through sometimes they forget to turn the heat back down. 

The main hurdle is that we just have it all in a spreadsheet but the downfall here is that we don't get a notification or a 'one week outlook' on properties we may want to double check the temp at or ones that may need an oil tank filled if that makes sense.

Thanks again for the help!

Hey BP! 

An issue that I am currently working on right now is keeping track of the heat in my vacant rentals (25+ units at any given time). Particularly with the weather getting colder and colder here in PA we need to make sure we are regularly checking heat to make sure it is at a minimum to not shoot up costs but high enough not to let the pipes freeze. The other option would be to winterize. 

What system or applications would you recommend using to keep track of these?

Thank you for any input 

@Brandon Turner

Maybe a question for the “long distance investor” himself:

Have you considered investing in real estate internationally? If not, do you know someone who has and how complicated was that?