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All Forum Posts by: JD Martin

JD Martin has started 64 posts and replied 9535 times.

Post: What to pay friend for help with Interior Design?

JD Martin
ModeratorPosted
  • Rock Star Extraordinaire
  • Northeast, TN
  • Posts 10,046
  • Votes 16,198
Quote from @Michael Baum:

Exactly what @John Underwood said.

She will get some solid cred for designing a space and be able to use it in her portfolio.

🤣 This is what club owners and promoters used to tell bands I was in way back in the day "Oh, there won't be any pay but the exposure will be spectacular!" 🤣 Yeah, people die of exposure all the time 🤪

I agree with both you and John, though - you should not pay. You should graciously accept her offer to help, encourage her if she wants to jump into something like this full time (she might just be trying it out with you), let her use whatever she helped you with as part of her portfolio starting out, and if she's amenable to it give out her contact info to others looking for the same service and offer to be an excellent reference. 

Money is important but it's not everything. She said she doesn't want any money, so don't run the risk of possibly offending her by offering what might be peanuts for the actual work. Besides, sometimes people don't want money because they don't want responsibility for the project. If she helps you out with the project and it turns out to be a bust, well she was just offering opinions, not professional expertise that you expected by paying. I've helped out plenty of people with all kinds of things RE for free - sometimes just out of my good graces, and sometimes because I didn't want to be responsible for the ultimate outcome so I could always recommend that they continue to do more research or employ someone for whatever it is they were doing (especially important when it comes to friends/family). 

Post: Just Passed My Exam! Looking for Brokerage Advice for a Newbie!

JD Martin
ModeratorPosted
  • Rock Star Extraordinaire
  • Northeast, TN
  • Posts 10,046
  • Votes 16,198

Congratulations!

If possible a brokerage that will support your continued education, match you up with a good mentor (someone that sells/lists a lot of properties successfully), and doesn't use you as a source of income for the firm rather than as a potential asset (a lot of agencies charge you a monthly "membership" fee for the 'privilege' of calling yourself an agent of a specific firm). 

For a lot of firms - especially the ones that rake good cash from agents outside of sales - it's just a numbers game. 100 agents each paying $100 "membership" fee is 10 grand a month just off dues. Certain fees are fair - office, technology, supplies - but they should be relatively minimal as part of the sales commission that comes right off the top is supposed to support those things, not just be pure profit for the managing broker. 

Post: Realistic expectations for minimal effort?

JD Martin
ModeratorPosted
  • Rock Star Extraordinaire
  • Northeast, TN
  • Posts 10,046
  • Votes 16,198
Quote from @Thomas Slifka:

Looking to buy first rental in Orlando or Tampa from Connecticut. I've stocks over real estate guy, but I've maxed out 401k & IRA. Only debt is primary residence mortgage at 2.0875%. Have about $120k cash and an extra $3500/month I've been putting into a taxable stock account. My local realtor hooked me up with some experienced investors in Orlando. I'd like to buy a newer townhome or house around $300k and have property manager handle yearly leases. Looking for long term appreciation, don't need cash flow.


 What makes you pick Tampa or Orlando? I'd skip both areas, which had a huge run up in prices the last few years and now is coming back to earth. I own a house near Orlando - a really nice house, on a small lake, in a nice community - and I'd be lucky to break even if I sold it today. The amount of inventory available both places is nauseating right now. 

In the price range you're looking at you need to think about cash flow because $300k is not going to buy you strong long-term appreciation; that's a starter home market in most places these days. Unless you can find a real wreck of a house in a great neighborhood in a high-priced market on the cheap. That will entail a distance rehab but better chances for long term appreciation. 

Post: Using AI for building leases and other forms?

JD Martin
ModeratorPosted
  • Rock Star Extraordinaire
  • Northeast, TN
  • Posts 10,046
  • Votes 16,198

I would never do it. There's no good reason to do it. There are templates everywhere (including here at BP) that have passed legal review in pretty much every state. Beyond that you might want to tailor some custom language in there that AI is going to ignore. Your lease is the basis of your relationship with your tenant - why would you want to leave that to the chance of a computer? 

Just think about this next time you want to do it:

Post: What bank should I use for a checking account for a Real Estate LLC?

JD Martin
ModeratorPosted
  • Rock Star Extraordinaire
  • Northeast, TN
  • Posts 10,046
  • Votes 16,198

Almost irrelevant. I've used pretty much every major bank that exists and the differences aren't even worth talking about. My preference for business banking is lots of branches in different states, since we get a fair amount of out-of-state tenants these days, and something that pays decent on idle cash. Beyond that I don't really care all that much. 

Post: How to paint

JD Martin
ModeratorPosted
  • Rock Star Extraordinaire
  • Northeast, TN
  • Posts 10,046
  • Votes 16,198

Unless you have a new construction house I would pass on the interior paint sprayer. You need to do a superb job taping off everything to use a sprayer indoors as mist and overspray gets on everything. If you're just talking about painting a few rooms here and there, a roller and 2" cut in brush will take care of 95% of anything you'll come across. If you want to roll faster get the 18" roller and a bucket mount paint grid. Also a collapsible roller handle extension. Then start watching Youtube. You'll see professionals get all the way to the baseboard and all the way to the ceiling without ever lifting the roller, they just adjust their hands and arms as they're rolling to do nice, long even strokes. Guys that know what they are doing can roll off a 12x12 room in 15 minutes and cut in a typical room in less than an hour. I'm not a professional and I can do an average 12x12 room by myself in under 2 hours. Learn how to cut in without taping off or needing a shield is a huge time saver. 

Post: Vacant rental property security monitoring

JD Martin
ModeratorPosted
  • Rock Star Extraordinaire
  • Northeast, TN
  • Posts 10,046
  • Votes 16,198

If I had squatter problems more than one time I would bite the bullet for monitored security and just consider it a cost of doing business, assuming I didn't want to sell the house. Once the system is installed, you leave it installed and (if you want) turn it on and off when you have/don't have tenants. Simplisafe is the easiest way to do that - they don't care if you subscribe/unsubscribe every other month - but once you get past the contract date you can do it with more or less any of them. Because you don't have and don't want to pay for wifi, you need a system that's monitored by cell.

Trail cams are only going to tell you that someone has broken in, if they're mounted in the right spot. Years ago I used to have one that worked with US Cellular, but they got out of the business so I have no idea if any of the other carriers have these any more. 

Post: Discriminating against tenants legally

JD Martin
ModeratorPosted
  • Rock Star Extraordinaire
  • Northeast, TN
  • Posts 10,046
  • Votes 16,198

I don't realistically know how you would even do such a thing, but without spending any time trying to research whatever evidence you think you have I'm going to guess it's complete BS as I would almost guarantee there is zero correlation between evictions and political leanings. The worst tenants I've ever had - ultimately left before having to be evicted but did thousands in damages - were almost certainly conservative Republicans. That means nothing because 75% of the people who live in my area are conservative Republicans. I'd bet 75% of the evictions were of conservative Republicans. I would expect similar results in highly liberal areas. 

Post: Why Are We Okay With Losing Income Every Time a Tenant Leaves?

JD Martin
ModeratorPosted
  • Rock Star Extraordinaire
  • Northeast, TN
  • Posts 10,046
  • Votes 16,198

Well, this post sounds like the beginning of every other advertisement on Youtube these days. But on the off chance that it's not an advertisement, and you're really wondering how to avoid thousands of dollars worth of losses on tenants - screen well, keep rents at or slightly below market rates, maintain and repair your properties promptly as needed, be a responsive landlord, and don't deal in C and below properties and you're probably as close to guaranteed as you can be. 

Post: Would You Buy a Note Where the Borrower Hasn’t Paid in 15 Years?

JD Martin
ModeratorPosted
  • Rock Star Extraordinaire
  • Northeast, TN
  • Posts 10,046
  • Votes 16,198

I was going to say something similar to @Russell Brazil - if it was cheap enough to be worth the upside I would do it. But then I read what it was and what you said people bid and that's just damned crazy.