All Forum Posts by: Jody Schnurrenberger

WELCOME!  I hope you love BP as much as I do!  There's so much information on here, it's amazing!  :-)

I am sorry for your loss as well.  Make sure you have the personality for managing a property.  Even the most thorough background check doesn't 100% guarantee a trouble-free tenant.  Personally, I'm entirely too nice to do my own management.  I've tried and failed.  Be sure you can make the tough decisions when/if needed.  Can you evict a family with 3 kids, one who is special needs when the husband lost his job and they haven't paid in several months?  I can't.  Just know what you can and can't handle.  Good luck!

If the neighbors are renters, have you tried talking to their landlord?  Perhaps he'd be understanding of your plight.  Also, maybe he doesn't appreciate this tenants having poop all over the place.  Hopefully he will be on your side.  Good luck!  :-)

Welcome to BP!  Funny that you're considering Raleigh as an affordable market.  Here's another newbie talking about investing out-of-state because Raleigh is too expensive.  lol  But I guess it's all relative...  https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/55/topics/520...

As for paying a property manager, for me, it's a non-issue.  If I want to have rentals, I WILL have a PM.  I'm a terrible PM, myself.  I've tried it and failed.  Not everyone is cut out for it and I'm definitely not, so even investing locally means I have to have a PM.  Don't let a PM stop you from investing.  Just consider that when you running your numbers so you don't short change yourself.  Also, I'd read the management contract of several companies before signing with one.  They can have pretty different contracts with some things in there that you might not like.  One contract I just read said they charge for advertising, but the lawyer representing them said they don't.  They just like to keep it open as an option.  Uh, so one day I might get an unexpected advertising bill?  It could be hundreds of dollars since it doesn't specify how much.  No thanks.  Another said I had to pay $300 to leave them, even if I gave the required 60 day notice and stopped working with them at the end of my contract.  That seems pretty rude to me.  Anyway, of course, talking to the PMs is important, but so is reading the contract!

WELCOME TO BP!  I hope you learn as much as I have!  This place is awesome!  Good luck on your real estate adventure!  :-)

@Dallas Martin, I'm with you.  Maybe TELL the tenant you're going to evict her and she'd better talk to the HA to get it straightened out, but don't start the process until January or something to give the HA time to actually try and do something.  Just an idea...But then, I'm way to soft to be my own PM.  Hahaha!  Good luck!

I've been looking into Section 8, myself. I could totally be wrong, but my understanding (even after reading the management agreement of the PM I was going to use) is that the HUD numbers include utilities, but we don't have to provide them. We just need to account for them in our estimates of what we can charge. Again, I could be wrong. I got my Section 8 estimates from the PM I was going to use. Even if you don't plan to use a PM, maybe just tell them you are thinking of getting into it and want to know what you can expect as rent. When I did, they asked for an actual address of a property I was looking at and gave me an estimate based on what else they manage in the area. (They are the only PM in the whole city that handles Section 8 rentals.) That's how I got my numbers and found that, if I can find a place that doesn't need too much work, but is still a good deal, they numbers work WAY better than my $100k+ properties. Good luck! :-)

I have 2 agents.  One is a long-time friend who thinks of me like a daughter.  I've known her since I was a kid and I use her for my properties that are over $100k.  But she isn't interested in Section 8-type properties, and knows almost nothing about them.  She also is uncomfortable with what she feels is a low offer.  (Though today I'm closing on a house that I'm paying what I offered and what she thought was too low to offer.)  I also have a brand new agent who just wants a commission, any commission.  He doesn't mind showing me a $25k house or letting me offer $10k.  But because of his lack of experience, I would rather not sink a ton of money into a house with him when he might not know it was in a bad rental area or something like that.

I also need to actually like my agent.  I know some folks think that clicking with a person you do business with isn't as important as them being a good business match, but I need to like them and their personality, no matter HOW great they are at their job.  And I prefer one whose office I plan to use as my PM, but right now I don't have that.  I'm hoping to get that when I move on to my next city in a couple of years.  But this is mostly just for convenience and because I feel like they might be a touch more motivated to help me find something if they are also going to be managing it...but this might not be true.  lol  They also need to be fairly responsive to me.  When I ask to see a house with my $100k agent, I'm usually there within an hour.  But another BP person is on their 2nd agent that makes them wait days to see a property.  She feels that's why she keeps losing things she's interested in.  She can't get there in a timely manner.  Makes sense.  I agree that I prefer one that is an investor, but both of my agents are, however, after talking more in depth with the one that I spend more with, she's really more a hobbyist.  She didn't realize it until after I found BP and got smarter about actually investing.  She's learned a lot from me.  (Thanks BP!)  :-)  It is ideal if they are actually serious investors, but then I wonder if they won't get the best properties for themselves if they are interested in the same things I am, as suggested above.  But perhaps I'm just being paranoid.  Heeheehee

I'm currently on disability, but last year I was in the Army. I didn't have to worry about being passed over for promotions and such because of my REI and the perception that I didn't need the money.

It usually didn't come up because I don't manage my own stuff and was never even in the same state with it, so unless I was looking for property or something, it just never found it's way to conversation.

When looking for property, I tend not to tell people who are bad with money.  Obviously, if I can afford to buy a house, I can afford to lend them $200 til payday, so I should lend it to them.  Things get sticky if they perceive that I'm rich.  But for those better off than me, it wasn't something I kept as a secret if it came up in conversation.

Now that I'm on VA disability, people think I'm scamming the system if I have real estate and get a disability check. But they are completely separate things. I can work full-time and still have a VA disability check. It pays for damage from the Army, not because I'm not capable of working. But because I'm currently actually not capable of working, people see me as one of those people who lives off a government check and is investing in real estate at the expense of their taxes. When I'm back to a full-time job again, I'll probably go back to my former way of handling it...even though I'll still be getting my disability check. Like I said, for VA disability, it's not related to my ability to work, only damage done by the military service.

@Jake Roland, making sure you were aware of this sort of thing going on.  I wasn't .