All Forum Posts by: Heath Jones

@Kevin Lefeuvre

If the mortgage is still due on the 1st, then rent is due on the 1st. I’m not sure how I will handle it if my tenants aren’t allowed to work and thus won’t receive a paycheck for the time they don’t work. I didn’t think it was going to escalate to the magnitude it has.

But I guess this is why we put back money for reserves. Use that for mortgage if necessary and help set up a payment plan for your tenants for the back rent once all the hysteria calms down and folks go back to work.

This does not sound like an agent I would want to work with at all. You want an agent that will find you properties that match your criteria. We have two real estate agents that we love, but they have very different skillsets. One is a big player in our local market so if we find a property and need someone to fight for us to win the bid, they are our go-to person. Our other agent is amazing because they will go find us deals that aren't on the market. We told them what we wanted to find rental properties in this particular area, so they cold-called some owners and found owners who weren't looking to sell, but since she already had someone interested, they decided to sell to us. 

You should go and interview a few different real estate agents, tell them what you want and let them know that you are talking with other agents to find one you can work with consistently on your REI goals and see what they bring you. Good Luck!

@Bjorn Ahlblad

I completely agree!! When running the numbers for all the SFRs, my wife and I were like... we can put in the same amount of money for a fourplex and make a higher CoC. Plus, we can still pay the mortgage even if we had two vacancies for a full month. Economy of scale is a beautiful thing and why I dove head first into acquiring multifamily properties!!

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the replies!!! Keep em coming!

I just wanted to open up a discussion for people to share anything (software, strategy, hiring someone to help, etc.) that was a game-changer for them. 

Check out the MFREE podcast this week as we learn from Travis Watts about how to become a truly passive investor through multifamily syndications. In this episode, he provides actionable items and a quick way to calculate what you need to achieve financial independence via your investments.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/...

https://open.spotify.com/episo...

What would you do if you found out another group keeps submitting offers on the same properties you are?

Lesson #4 - Ask tenants to get full picture of ‘hidden’ deferred maintenance

One we thing we were surprised by when we first took over managing our apartment buildings was how little they were managed by the company before us. With my and wife and I both being extremely CDO (i.e., that’s OCD in alphabetical order, in case you were wondering), I was at our property several times a week picking up trash outside, waving and saying how to our tenants that would pass by and asking them if they needed anything.

There were a lot, I mean A LOT, of minor repairs that the previous owners had told them weren’t deemed critical. This including things like a missing interior door, a window that would not open, and other small things like that. Granted, I agree these types of items may not be critical to the safety and structural integrity of the property, but still. We couldn’t believe these were not taken care of.

Now it may be a flawed-thought for making money, but we are of the mindset that if we were living in an apartment with a minor issue we wanted to be fixed... we would expect it to be fixed. Of course if it is the tenant’s fault, then they should cover the cost, but it should still get fixed.

When looking at the deferred maintenance before purchasing, we had calculated a lot of the big ticket items (like insulation in attic, power washing repointing brick cracks, etc.) and we had even included things we could see like missing doors. However, you will not get the full picture of things that your tenants need until you talk to them. You cannot expect that a property manager will do this.

If you are thinking of self-managing your own apartment buildings, you either have to come to terms with hiring a PM and not knowing the entire picture when comes to your property or spend the time to know each unit in and out. We feel that if we are the sole-owners, we want to do the latter.

What are your thoughts?

What is something you know now and/or wish you knew before buying a metal frame apartment building?

@Paul Ball

There is a Wiregrass Real Estate meetup the first Tuesday of every month. Let me know if you are interested and I can shoot you the details.