All Forum Posts by: James Johnson

I will only speak for Texas. Each property has 4-7 "taxing jurisdictions" which potentially can change their tax rates every single year. Add all of these up and you get the total tax rate for that specific property. You could potentially have properties 1 mile apart and have one property at a 2.7% tax rate and the other at 3.1%, it just depends if the property is located within certain taxing jurisdictions. 

For a quicker analysis, the average tax rate for Texas is 2.8% (2.8 cents per $1). Austin Tax rates average lower, but most other big cities hover around the 2.8 number.

Hope this helps for Texas! I don't believe you will be able to find a list of what you are looking for because each property can be different, down to the school district.

Hi Cheyenne, 

First off, props to you for wanting to take action at such a young age. I started investing when I was 18 and it has definitely paid off! I now am a part of 5 different apartment syndication's and own 12 units that I manage myself (all duplexes). It sounds like you have already been going to real estate meetups so that is "step one"! 

Your next steps are probably going to look a little different than most. Because I am assuming you don't have a job (or a job that pays well enough to qualify for a loan) you will likely need to find a partner to help qualify you. This could be one of your parents, someone you meet at a RE meetup, friend (with a job) etc. Maybe someone can enlighten me on how you could do it otherwise, but I think you will have a tough time getting any sort of loan without W-2 income.

I would focus on finding someone that you may be able to partner with for buying your first deal. Please correct me if I have misrepresented your income and then I will change up my advice a little! 

Crazy. I feel somewhat fortunate that the tenants didn't really fight the water bill being billed back...

Closing on another 4 units in a month!

Update to this situation;

I started charging back the water bills to 3/4 of the tenants (because those 3 leases said I could). And after about 2 months of owning the property, I had a plumber go check all 4 units for water leaks and he found 2 toilets running. I guess the tenants didn't care (hopefully they will now since they will be paying for the water!!). Water bill now runs about 240-260/month and as of June 1st, all of the water is being billed back to the tenants and we are running smoothly! 

Yeah, in this case, the previous owners were eating ~$450-500...

That is a fair point Anthony. Sounds like I will chalk it up to a "start up cost". I appreciate all the responses! 

Thanks for the input guys. I'll update you on what ends up happening. We will likely start billing back the water using a RUBS program and hopefully they are grateful that they didn't have to pay for water in the past instead of mad they need to pay it now.

Hello, I wanted to get some advice on a potential legal situation,

I recently purchased a property where we were told that the tenants had been paying the water bill. We come to find out they had never been paying the bill which is roughly $500/month for all 4 units (total). Naturally this completely kills our proforma.

The leases state that the tenants ar responsible for the water bill so of course we can, and likely will, start enforcing the lease. That being said, we are about the piss off all our tenants because the previous owner never billed them back for the water.

Does anyone have suggestions or advice on how to handle this? Should we be taking the previous owners to small claims court for something? 

Any and all advice is welcome!

Thanks!