All Forum Posts by: Hilary Graves

Could use some guidance...Our 5 unit apartment building does not allow smokers, as clearly stated in all leases. Two tenants have complained about cigarette butts on the property, and one just complained that his unit is starting to smell like smoke. He then sent a picture of a pack of cigarettes in the lawn chair of our 2nd floor tenant. Is that sufficient evidence for serving that 2nd floor tenant a Notice to Comply and slap her with the $50 fee (for breach of lease) and $30 fee (for making us serve the notice)? TIA

P.S. We cannot go there in person as we are on vacation!

Hi folks! My sister and brother-in-law live in Charleston, SC and are renters. They love it there, have somewhat low income (one is a hair stylist and the other works at a restaurant). They were saving to buy but the housing prices have just about doubled in the last few years in their area. Are there any lenders out there who would be willing to talk to them about their options? They would be first-time home buyers. They are more than open to house-hacking and likely would run an STR in a 2nd or 3rd unit.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Hilary Graves

Managing Partner,

Bright Sound Investments

Thanks for your feedback.  I met Liz Faircloth (from the DeRosa group and InvestHER) at a meetup where she was speaking recently, and personally asked her this question, and she encouraged me to go for it.   I'm glad I did because today, not only did everything go through as planned, but the lender said they were able to waive title insurance fees and all other fees! Maybe because of other funds we have that could be used as collateral?  Not sure!   Anyway, phew...I feel like we just saved $2331!

We are hoping to BRRRR. We are currently executing a refi on our first BRRRR, and we'd like the next one to be a little bigger (purchase price on the first one was $299,000). So if we can find the right properties, purchase prices will be somewhere between $300K and $500K most likely.

Our personal residence is paid for and it's worth approximately $378,000 (according to a quick desktop appraisal from our local bank). We would like to take out a HELOC. At 80% LTV, that would give us $302,400 available funds to draw on and use to make cash offers. The bank will give us up to $250,000 with no fees, but if we want any more than that (and we do:) we have to pay $2331 in title insurance. Is it worth it?

We've never used hard money and are kind of newbies...we've purchased 2 properties/7 doors so far.

Thank you in advance!

Hi all! My husband and I are about to execute our very first BRRRR- with our very first property. (Oh my gosh, I've been waiting for this moment!) It's a 5-unit that we bought 6 months ago for $299,000, put $50,000 into it (new floors, countertops, painted cabinets, new hardware, painted exterior, bought coin-op laundry machines), increased the rents dramatically, added pets fees, and now we plan to pull all of our money back out so we can rinse and repeat.

Yesterday I met with my multi-family appraiser friend, just to validated our new value before pulling the trigger. He estimated that it should appraise for somewhere around $500,000 which is wonderful (we would get 75% of that, which is $375,000). So I'm not complaining at all, BUT in my spreadsheet, I had it closer to $512,000 because I was counting the extra laundry income ($84/month x 12 months / 8.2% cap rate = $12,292). According to my appraiser friend, you don't count laundry income in the NOI. Is that standard?? If so, why doesn't it count?

Thank you in advance.

Hilary

Co-owner, Bilary Property Group, LLC

We charge a $250 one-time fee (altogether for 1 or 2 pets). And then $40 per month per pet. I was doing $25 per month but saw that someone else in our area was charging $40. I'd rather do the higher pet rent than the one time fee, because it adds up much more over the long haul, and has a huge effect on a cash out refi if doing a BRRRR.

Hello,

My wife and I are about to serve our first Notice to Quit. We are in Pennsylvania. If I'm reading PA Law correctly, for one year and under we must only provide 15 days notice and for any lease longer than 1 year, 30 days is required. We inherited this tenant and want to remove her so we can renovate the building one unit at a time, and this tenant is a smoker! Her lease started 4/1/2020 and ends 3/31/2021 so by my calculations, we would only be required to give 15 days notice, right? We are concerned that if we give notice, she will not pay for the month of April and if we give 30 days to vacate, we are out a month instead of 15 days.  Any advice is appreciated.  Thank you.

Bill

Loving all these great tips from everyone -thank you !!!!!!

Another question - can I write the denial letter to applicants (based on them not meeting our credit score requirements) and send it in an email?    Or does it need to be sent through the actual mail?  Thank you!

Thank you- You are all making good points. I am a newbie, so I’m refining the system already :-) I made a Google form for everyone to fill out, as a prescreen, whether or not they have filled out the application through Zillow. Thanks for enlightening me everyone! Next time around I will be way better at this!

I do wonder though, do I need to send an official “rejection” form to explain why we are not showing the property to certain people (such as “you did not meet the minimum credit score requirement”) and can I put this form in my own words?