All Forum Posts by: James Bynum

I'm going to throw another question out there that's a little related. I've been a renter myself for quite some time and most apartments I've lived in use those cheap blue filters that looks more like a blue spiderweb with a lot of big holes. Don't those cause more damage to the A/C units over time by allowing bigger particles into it? I've always taken those out and replaced them with a good filter to filter out all the dust.

I haven't used it yet, but it seems to be on the up and up, and it's completely free for your first rental to test them out. It's called https://www.rentalutions.com/. It seems to do absolutely everything. It will list your vacancy to all the major players, your tenants can enter their info and you can compare all the applicants with background and credit checks, you can get state specific legal documents like leases and whatnot. You can do financials, track maintenance and collect rent online with no fee for you or the tenant. 

I don't know about you seasoned investors, but my plan for my first unit is to implement the website https://www.rentalutions.com/ Your first rental is completely free, so it's a nice way to test them out. Prospective tenants fill out all the info through their site and they do a complete background check for you. You can also collect rent online free for both you and the tenant. And it keeps track of maintenance requests and financials. it also gives you legal forms to use for your new tenants. Sounds like a win win to me. At least for starting off since it's completely free for that first rental.

I just saw an ad on Facebook for this new Real Estate app. It looks a lot like zillow but this app claims you can actually bid on homes and get help 24/7 buying a house through the app. Here's the description.

Introducing a radically better way to buy or sell a home. Xome is the world’s first truly integrated way to buy and sell a home.

We assist you from start to finish; including finding your dream home or listing yours for sale, making and receiving offers, moving into escrow and finally closing the deal.

Key Features:

hey all, I've actually been active on this forum for a couple months trying to work out an investing strategy, but wanted to make things "official"

I'm new to REI and new to the Spartanburg - Greenville, SC area. It's made it a little challenging to figure out what neighborhoods are good and which are not so good, but I've been driving around a lot to get a better feel for the area.

My long term goal is passive income from rentals, and from my research Spartanburg is at about 50% renters to owners, so that sounds like a great place for buy and holds. But the sales from what I've seen are a tad on the weak side, so I plan on looking at surrounding areas to do flips to raise capital for the rentals. To get started I'll be using a decent inheritance to fund the flips. I plan on keeping my current job until it's no longer helpful to do so. (IE. Tap out conventional mortgages)

I'm looking to meet as many investors in this area that I can so I can grow this new business venture.

Thanks @Troy S. So the price right now is at $97,800 which is really weird because just 2 weeks ago I'm 85% sure the place was listed for $78,000 but zillow doesn't show the price change as it would normally if they dropped the price, but it's been on the market for so long I can't imagine why they would increase the price by $20,000. Also the listing at the time showed they were charging $350/month for each unit, which also sucks.

Hey @Troy S. I drove that street for that deal you are talking about and it is a horribly bad area, probably top 5 worst in the city that I've seen. I drove it around 9PM and rolled my windows up and locked my doors. Sketchy people walking around. Whole 3BR 1,500 SF homes in the area are only renting for around $700.

I know this is an old thread, but I am interested in seeing if property tax rates vary in a lot of states or just mine. In SC, an owner occupied property is taxed at 4%, if it is a non owner occupied it jumps to 6%. Apparently either SC hates investors or just wants to capitalize on them.

Hey @Jay Hinrichs, where are you investing in SC? I've heard Myrtle Beach is exploding right now. Unfortunately, growth in my city isn't going great, although Greenville is always steadily growing and there are probably decent deals to be had, and is only about 45 minutes from me

I agree with you @Gilbert Dominguez, building is not right for me. I'm also not sure about the housing market here, I've been searching for deals every way I know how for the last 5 months here and while there are some decent deals here, the return just doesn't seem to be worth the investment although if you believe the stats on areavibes.com it shows that 48.9% of housing in this city is renter occupied, which seems incredibly high, so for a long term buy and hold might sound decent, but I think it also means there are not many people buying homes here which means I could get completely stuck in a property with no exit strategy.

I'm just racking my brain and trying to use this incredible gift to help put me in a much better situation, even though I know it's not an insane amount and I need to be extremely careful with it because one wrong move right now and it could all be gone.

I have loved the career path I've been in working in news, it's been incredibly fun and fulfilling, but I'm seeing the writing on the wall that this industry is going through a change, and people in my position are starting to get cut and also paid less than we were 10 years ago. 

I'm realizing that I need to get out, and I've always been fascinated with real estate, it sounds incredibly challenging and I love challenges. I love analytics! I spend hours every night just for fun looking through properties and calculating deals, and I'm getting better at it.

But right now I just feel stuck, I don't have any other words to describe it. I need to do something, change something sooner than later and I feel at 32 years old I'm still young enough to find something new, but TV is all I've known since I was 12, and outside of just quitting and going back to college to find a new path, I'm just not sure what other job if even be qualified for.

Right now I'm even looking at taking RE classes to get my RE license, but my job has such crazy hours (I go in at 9:30 and don't usually get off till after 7:30 and then I'm still on call 24/7) that I don't even see a way of doing it.

Sorry for the novel guys, I'm just at my wits end right now. I just need to get outside my comfort zone, and I appreciate all the feedback so far and have really learned a lot from everyone and this site.