All Forum Posts by: Jim Blatchley

@Sarah White, hi and congrats on finally getting your project finished. My thoughts are since you don't have an agreement in place you should look at what you both brought to the project. You brought your particular skills and your partner brought the money. Apparently you didn't have the money, so you couldn't have done the deal without your partner. He, on the other hand, had the money and probably could have found someone else to do the work. At this point, and in order to have an amicable outcome, I would go with a 50/50 split plus your 20k, and call it a day and a valuable learning experience. It's always better to have 50% of something rather than 100% of nothing. Best of luck now and in the future. Hope this works out for you both.

Jim

Hi @Lyne Swimpson,

Even though your post is 7 months old and you probably already found an answer, here's an interesting website that has lots of stats regarding vacancy rates but not vacancy periods. https://ipropertymanagement.co... I think that vacancy periods are more dependent on certain factors relative to the property and location. It depends on these factors and how much you advertise to find your tenants. There are many good property management companies in the area that can do it all for you too. The best thing you can do is do your due diligence upfront and find a quality tenant the first time. Hope this helps a little. Best of luck to you.

@Harry Williams Btw, you used to be able to post pics directly in your posts, not sure if you still can, but just a thought. 

I just saw the listing on Zillow. The bad new is, you now have just under 5000 views. The good news is, 141 people saved it. They most likely saved it for one main reason, waiting for the price to drop. There's another house for sale close by that looks very similar to yours, it even looks like you might have done the rehab it looks so similar. It's a little bigger and has a much roomier open layout then yours. It's listed for $569k and has been on the market for 70 days, but only saved by 40 people. Not knowing the area at all and not doing any more research, could I spend the same $549k and get a bigger home with a better living room layout, better yard, and better neighborhood (not saying this neighborhood is bad, it looks very nice)? That's what buyers are going to ask themselves. You did an amazing rehab. The house looks incredible. I saw an outside pic from 2012 and there's no comparison. The kitchen is a dream kitchen, but is that enough for someone to shell out $549k? Also, if you think storage is an issue, is it feasible to put a storage shed in the back yard? 

I don't know how much you put into the rehab, but I would drop your price by $20k now and if it doesn't sell within 30 days, I'd drop it to $497k. I've been there and I know from experience, it's not worth trying to squeeze out a larger margin then the market will allow. I might take it off market for a short time at some point too, so that the view count will reset. Whatever you do, don't make the same mistake that I made once and let emotions factor into it. Get it sold and move on. Best of luck to you and keep us posted please.

 Give the neighbor some incentive (not that you should have to, but). Tell him you'll mow his lawn for a month or two (or something similar), if he stops working on his car, at least until after your house is sold.

 If there's 100, 200, 300 views and a house hasn't sold, then people tend to think there must be something wrong with it so they don't bother to look at it further.

@Dawn Oree Please google "renatus ripoff report" before you do anything. There is a lot of info that you should read first. The people running this operation have been sued and shut down before with similar schemes. IMHO it's not worth taking a chance on. There's just too much excellent, free info available online. As stated in some of the posts above, you are already leaps and bounds ahead of most investors with the education that you already possess. Also, as you know, there are many really good people on BP that will help you if you get stuck along the way. Best of luck to you.

I just did a Google search and found this website that compares many different softwares. Hope this helps.

http://www.capterra.com/vacation-rental-software/

@Kumar Chin I just checked out Realtor.com as I hadn't been on there for quite sometime. It seems that they operate with lots of search filters rather than keywords. They do have many filters so it's fairly easy to narrow down your search. If you click on the filters at the top of the page you will see all the features and you can add more features if you want.

I hope this helps and good luck with your searching.

I am not waiting or depending on public schools to teach my son about finances. He is 8 yrs. old and I've already been teaching him about finances. I was never taught about it when I was growing up and had to teach myself. I want to home school him eventually, but in the meantime I make sure I take the time to at least familiarize him with the basics. We will get into more in depth knowledge as he gets older.

I believe we just have to find the time to do it ourselves, if we want to make sure our children are truly prepared.

@Robert Gailie Hi Robert. I would suggest getting in touch with @Scott Meyers and @Michael Wagner. They are both the best Self Storage guys I know. Best of luck with your investing.