All Forum Posts by: Jeffrey Gignac

@Stephani Horstman, It seems to be working very well so far. The tenant mentioned above is actually leaving his lease early so I have gotten to see the application process in action as potential new occupants have applied for the house.

I aim to actually close on my first new lease using Cozy.co start to finish this week. Marketing your property is made simple with the creation of one ad through Cozy that is then placed on Realtor.com and several affiliate sites. That is how I ultimately will have found my tenant.

As applications and credit/background checks start rolling in, you just get notified by email. Other than that there are no annoying notifications through the system. I more than likely will develop my own lease and not use the stock one created through their interface, but I will know more about that in the next couple days.

Since rent collection has not started, I cannot speak to the speed to which rent payments are actually transferred to my bank account. I'm sure that is everyone's biggest question, sorry I cannot answer for you quite yet.

JDG

UPDATE #2:

I made an initial offer of $100K on this property with the MLS asking price of $129,900. The sellers countered at $126,900 to which I re countered at $105K. The seller did not take the offer and I was not willing to pay more than that for the property in question. I am moving onto other houses on my list that show good potential. Fortunately my realtor understands what I am looking to acheive and has been flexible and accomodating putting in offers and showing me lots of property. She could be one of the few in my area that understands what investors are looking for and can take alot of the screening process into her own hands which saves me time on the front end.

My current rental property has a tenant looking to break their lease early. Sorting out these issues and finding another tenant has been a bump in the road towards locating and bidding on my next potential purchase.

All great points @Nicole A., @Jordan Sand, and @Max T.. We have arranged for the tenant to pay through July if I have a new tenant that can move in on 8/1/2016 or continue to pay until a new tenant is secured. This will separate rent from the Security Deposit as suggested above, which is definitely a smart idea. I am quite excited as hospital residents are moving to town this time of year and have a history of being good tenants. A bump in rent will also be wonderful. Thanks for all of the input!

My first tenant to my first and only rental property is looking to move out and get out of his lease early for reasons having to do with the custody of his children and school districts. He has been a fantastic tenant who always pays on time and has made many upgrades to the home at his own expense. He has never asked for special consideration and it has been a fantastic working relationship. 

He would like to be out by the end of June (45 days notice) and his lease runs throught September. I know that finding a renter will be easy and I should not miss more than 1 month's rent by letting him out early. How should I handle the sitation? I have a $900 security deposit that I am holding that can always be credited towards the 1 month of lost rent ($900/ month). 

One positive to note, I have been renting at a severely undermarket rent. Smaller houses on the same street on renting for almost $1400/ month. This could be a good opportunity to bump up rent when they leave. Any suggestions are welcomed!

Thanks for the input @Ray Thorsen, @Padrick C., @Marian Smith, @Michael Mims! I am going to give it a try as the floors are not terribly worn but just need a touch-up before making a few more years towards a refinishing. 

Glad that I threw the question out there because I definitely wanted a second opinion before laying something down on my floors, that I knew little about. I will update this post once I have tried the solution and have some first hand results.

Does anyone on the site have any experience with the "Rejuvenate" Floor Restorer or other solutions on the market that offer a less expensive alternative to refinishing a wooden floor that is in reasonable condition for it's age?

This will be for a rental property and I am looking to add extra value where I can. My realtor that I work with loves the stuff and suggested I try before laying out the cash to refinish the floors. In several years, I imagine I will ultimately have them refinished but I want a stop gap in the meantime.

UPDATE #1:

I've gone back through the potential property for a 2nd visit that was mentioned in the first post. Upon my second walk through with an experienced GC, I am going to be making an offer on the property this week with the following assumed renovations needed. 

Necessary repairs before filling the house with a renter will include a wood floor treatment (not full on refinishing with polyurethane), touch up trim paint in each room, selectively touch up wall paint in certain rooms, repair a portion of ceiling from water damage (source of damage identified and repaired by owners), as well as general cleaning of Full Bath tub and tile surround. Plumbing and other electrical components have been updated and maintained, but will still be scrutinized during inspection.

Comparable rents in the area are reaching as high as $1,350-1,400 for 4/2's and 3/1.5's that will be upfit to the same degree. I plan on asking $1,100 for this property with a purchase price not to exceed $100,000. After mortgage, taxes, insurance, and allowances, for repair and property management (I will self manage), I am budgeted to net $250/ month. This comes with an underestimation of potential rent and an over estimation of expected repairs and other routine and non routine costs.

My second property purchase will be through my own personal name with proceeds and expenses running through an established S-Corp that houses the earnings from my first rental unit just down the street.

Great input from everyone so far. I have helped my father manage a 4 BR, 2 BA townhome in the Virginia Tech market of Blacksburg, VA. This unit has been owned and rented since October 2004 to date without missing a lease cycle in that time period (August-July leases). For the first 4 of those years, an immediate family member (owner's son) lived in one of the bedrooms as a student.

To answer your original question, @Levi Painter, I've seen that Craigslist and a local school newspaper are extremely effective ways to find a tenant who operates on the school calendar. If either of these do not work then Facebook is the other obvious route which is also extremely effective and inexpensive if not free (try the marketplace before paying for ads).

Lastly, the owner of this property created a very basic website just for this house in question. It's URL was simple (www.address.com) and made for an easy page to post contact information for leasing the unti. This was also the place to upload more pictures than would be allowed through Craig's List. 

@Zach Winner, I agree with everything that @Edward B. mentioned. I would use an LLC or series of LLC's based upon risk tolerance or similarity of investments. If you had a collection of properties that were all in one city or partcular part of a city, they could be grouped together. How you personally organize your information may also dictate which properties you put into which LLC's. It is essential to treat these businesses as separate from you personally, as that is the only way to keep personal and corporate liability separate from each other. Stack an umbrella policy on top of these corporate structures and you should be secure.

@Steve Vaughan, The IRS ruling that you are referring to only applies if you have lived and used the piece of property as an occupant for a minimum amount of time during your period of ownership. The idea behind this preferential tax treatment is to not penalize an individual with higher taxes if they had to sell their home to move for a job or other outstanding circumstances. Does not apply for investors so placing homes in an entity (LLC, S-Corp, etc.) is ideal once you have accumulated a critical mass of properties.

I have recently signed up for Cozy.co as the platform and interface all seem very simple and clean. I am awaiting my tenant to go through his end of the sign-up process before we begin exchaning payments for rent. He has always been a timely payer but was looking for electronic solutions and this seemed to be worth a try. I will update once I am more familiar with the system.