All Forum Posts by: Jacob G.

It certainly worked for the person, who sold the list and serviced the yellow letters. I'll follow up if the people, who paid for the letters, calls back, based on caller id.  Like I said the letter was well written.  It seems to me this group wasn't prepared for the response, and so they wasted their money on the yellow letters.

Michael, I agree that recording the calls is very helpful.  If I were based in Utah, I would not announce that I am recording the calls, as it is not required in this state (IANAL).  I agree that it isn't too big of a deal, but it does announce that the person isn't truly calling an individual looking to buy a house, which the yellow letter implied.  This is probably a good thing in some cases and a negative in some cases.  

If you are spending money sending yellow letters, make sure your answering service doesn't run out of space.

I probably get around one yellow letter a week for one of my rentals.  I am considering selling it, and am genuinely interested in how the pitch will go, so I always call the number.  There are a few turn offs for me, which I thought I would share to see if others agreed, and to hopefully help others to not waste their money sending yellow letters in vain.  What prompted me to write this is one I received today.  Typical yellow letter, well written, folded in half so the envelope was a little more eye catching than some I have seen.  I decided to give her a call.  The first call said "this call may be monitored"  (Utah is a single party state, and the phone number I was calling to is a Utah number).  Assuming that it isn't just a call center in another state, I personally wouldn't put that on the call, but worse than that, there was just silence, I waited a full minute before calling back.  This time there was the same recording advisory then it cut to the middle of a voice mail message of a man with a rather gruff voice: "name and number and we'll get back with you"  Followed by a message saying the mailbox was full.

• If you say your name is Jane in the letter, but Bob answers the phone, it throws me off. 
• a full mailbox means wasted letters.
• Don't answer the phone by just saying "hello"  This is just good manners than anything else.  If I am calling Jane, and I hear "Hi, this is Jane" I know I called the right number.
• If it is a company instead of an individual as the letter stated, stating early in the conversation that the person taking the call works with or for whoever sent the letter is probably wise.  
• I know you sent a few hundred of these letters, but others may not.  It's probably still wise to have a good transition practiced to connect my number with the address "Remind me the address of your property?"

Are there any other tips you would give?

You are going to have a very difficult time finding a property, which matches the 1% rule, especially in the markets you used in your example. You might still find a 1% house in Rose Park, or Magna, but it will take some real searching. I think it will be a while before we see prices in the 1% area again.

I didn't see where you are personally living. If you don't have a personal residence, my recommendation would be to buy a duplex in the South Sugar House/Brickyard area. It won't meet the 1%, but it will appreciate better than the areas, which will hit the 1% "rule." You should be able to find a legal duplex for around 220K, which will rent for 850-900 a side. Live in half of it for long enough to save another down payment, rinse and repeat.

Rentler is KSL.com's classified section for rental homes. If you go to KSL classifieds to look for rental houses it takes you to rentler. Like I said, I get 90% of my responses from ads on Rentler, so it really should be included when you are advertising a rental.

There is a local service around here for listing properties for rent, which I get almost all of my online traffic from. They offer to screen the tenants, where the prospective tenant fills out a customizable application, and they run both background and credit checks. I think the cost to the tenant is $24.95, but I have not been able to verify that 100%.

I'm wondering if any local landlords have used this part of Rentler. It looks pretty similar to other online screening sites, but would be one stop, since potential renters are already on it.

Keywords to get the locals here: Salt lake, KSL, Utah, SLC, Wasatch Front, Provo.

From reading other posts, it seems multi year leases aren't really popular, and I understand why, but I am wondering if anyone has ever attempted to tie the CPI to their rental rates.

I have a renter, who is very interested in a three year lease, and I am thinking of putting into the contract that the monthly rent will increase each December based on the December to December CPI. This wouldn't be much, $22.78 based on a starting rent of $1,500 and September 2012-2013 numbers, but would hedge me a little against inflation, and I wouldn't have to deal with the hassle of finding new tenants for 3 years.

The house has been quick to rent. I think the normal 10% vacancy is high, so I don't think I would given them much of a discount, but even if the vacancy rate is 5% per year, That is $900 twice that I would save by having the longer lease.

Another idea I had was to base the annual increase off of the Social Security COLA, which has the risk of being politically manipulated in either direction.

Am I better to just avoid the three year lease entirely, or keep the rent the same over the three year term, based on the savings from not having the vacancy?

Thank you all. I should have been more clear that I don't have a particular property in mind, nor am I in a position to do anything now, but was thinking of this as a possible strategy for down the road.

What got me thinking about this was a short sale that came up on my local MLS. I called the real estate agent, and he said that the first mortgage had given them a price they would be willing to take, but the second wasn't really working with them yet, and had denied a previous offer (an offer, which I thought was way too high for the property). That and having seen another short sale where the second mortgage accepted less than $0.10 on the dollar.

I was wondering if this could be a good strategy in conjunction with buying short sales, however, it makes sense that the holder of the loan will be less likely to sell it to a third party for pennies on the dollar.

If I were interested in a particular house, and I know that the owners have stopped paying their mortgage, is there any way I could buy the first or second mortgage?

Do the national guys sell individual mortgages, instead of lumping them together as bulk deals? Have you ever heard of a local bank or credit union selling individual notes?

How would one approach a credit union to buy a second mortgage that they issued, but are not receiving payments on?

The question I have with the cure or quit is I don't want them trying to fix something. So can I require them to use my contractor to fix the issue, or do I just come back after the cure or quit time frame to see if it was done correctly? That makes sense for superficial issues.

On the latest podcast "20 deadly mistakes" they talked about inspecting units. My question is what if there is damage? I inspected one unit last month and did notice there was some damage on a wall, it looked like a chair had hit a wall. I pointed it out to them and they said it happened while they were moving in. I didn't think anything of it, as their deposit would easily cover it.

What if there was significant damage? Could I charge them for the fix upfront? For example, let's say I went in and they had significantly damaged hardwood floors, and had scratched all the walls?