All Forum Posts by: Jeremiah Maughan

The only way around this in Provo is to pursue the head of household occupancy. That HoH applies if you are an owner occupant or have dependents, and you have family living with you, and then have two additional related or unrelated singles living with you. As you might imagine, that's not super common and really only exists to allow for caretaker situations.  Just as an FYI, for at least the last 20 years Provo has been a 3 singles limit except in certain zones with master planned communities or grandfathered housing.   If you purchased your home through from a licensed agent you should have received a zoning disclosure, which tells you the legal use.  The limit has always been enforced, but the new ordinance puts more of an onus on tenants and landlords to be transparent about how they are renting and whether their occupancy is legal.

You're right that in this market in our area, seller financing is rare and partnering splits your earnings so that can be hard.  However, if you're the one with the cash it's not hard to find a partner to be the loan side through a joint venture or similar.  Usually it's easier to qualify for a loan than it is to amass a downpayment so you're a step a head in that respect.  You can always negotiate a deal to buy out their interest later.  If you want to PM me I can connect with some people who have expressed interest in that.

Your other option is to look at partial doc lenders.  Certainly you could go hard money, but if it will be a while until you can go full doc then it could get very expensive.  Partial doc lenders are private lenders, not freddie/fannie insured so the rates are higher, but they're willing to work with self-employed individuals more readily.  I've got some materials from a couple at my office I can dig up when I'm back so PM me and I'll get it to you.

Depends on the exact language of the lease.  If the lease is a fixed term, then no, you can't raise the rent until the end of the lease UNLESS your lease has a provision for doing so.  Some leases have built into them provisions whereby the landlord can increase rent in the event property taxes or other services to the property are increased.  There are probably other provisions that can get the same effect, but they would have to be in the lease prior to wanting to raise the rent.

You can call me. I'm happy to help.  I've had section 8 tenants for about 12 years and I'm guessing around 40 or 50 of our rental units receive section 8 assistance in some form.  One of my managers in particular is extremely well versed since she's the one with about 25 of them and I'm sure she'd b happy to meet.  We're primarily in Utah County but the process is similar among the different housing authorities..  Generally the process works well but it's slow and there is an entire secondary lease that is required, there is a ceiling to rents they can pay, there is a separate inspection process required, there are limitations to inspecting occupied units, etc etc etc.  The best part though is that the Utah state legislature just passed a recovery fund to help landlords who have been financially harmed by section 8 tenants.  So that has made renting to section 8 much less financially risky.

That shouldn't be too hard to find if you're going to owner occupy. You can have a different ROI tolerance than the typical absentee landlord based on your interest rate alone. There are lots of SFHs on the market, just check your zoning as a lot of landlords are dumb and buy a SFH thinking they can put 5 or 6 singles in it. Any agent with MLS access can set you up on a hot sheet to push to you listings that come on the MLS. That will give you the daily stream you're looking for.

@David J. I purchased a few properties in 2007, right before the crash.  The key was they cash flowed when I bought them.  The rents took a small dip, about 5%, during the recession, so my margins did get tighter but still okay such that it wasn't a big deal. I find that too often investors by for future gains, not for present cash flow.  To me that's nuts to buy on what rents might be or what appreciation might be.  Several of my peers and even clients let their properties go because they were pocketing the rents and not paying their mortgage.  I try to teach people to follow a "column A, column B, column C" method.  Column A is your monthly paycheck that goes to service your lifestyle.  Column B is your extra money for higher risk investing; money you don't need for your lifestyle, and you won't cry if you lose.  That's where I buy shares in startups or rentals that need to be fixed up.  Column C is stabilized, set it and forget it investment.  That's where rentals that are cash flowing, stocks paying dividends, etc live.  The mistake people make is when they try to use column C to pay for column A.  I just made sure to maintain discipline and never touch column C.  For me, the rent money wasn't for me to live on but for me to service the debt and build a reserve for the next purchase opportunity.  For those of my peers that did that, we all came out unscathed with a much higher net worth than we had in '07.

*raises hand* @Michael Rodrigues

Mailers tend to be a high volume situation.  Most of the people I know who send out mailers send out thousands each month.  One of the wholesalers I've met literally spends $4,000 per month on direct mailing.  So you might just not be hitting the volume yet to get results.

Honestly, Google will find wholesalers for you. Do a search for "Utah real estate wholesalers" and you'll see a few individuals pop up who have that as their business and you can sign up for their mailing lists.  Just make sure your cash is ready because they want to move fast.

My preferred method for finding properties is to wait for the market to slow down.  Barring that, it's just networking.  I try to network, keep my ears open for when a friend says they know someone who wants to sell, focus on a specific neighborhood that I really think has value in it, etc.

Hi Brandon, what did you decide to do? I've had a number of guys in your situation join my team to open a market.  It works out pretty well but it definitely depends on the broker.  I know of three companies who started on their own, found a broker who they paid a fee to be to the broker of record, but mostly did their own thing.  Frankly, I think that's license suicide for brokers because I've seen lots of newbies really blow it on the accounting and trust funds side and the brokers come close to losing their licenses.  I've cleaned up four different management companies due to that.  So there's the alternative, which is my model, where I have agents who hang their license with us and start developing a portfolio within our model with the intent of opening a branch or something more independent with us as partners.  That model is more of a traditional agent split model, with supporting broker services that are designed specifically for property management.  Where you get into trouble is the branding thing, and navigating the Division of Real Estate's regulations for that.  I'm happy to discuss it more with you if you're interested.