All Forum Posts by: Joe C.

Hi Tyler, best places for a line of credit (not loan) on a vacation home or investment property? Any special concerns/limits for them?

Glad I could help, but do hope you ran this by a CPA! Best of luck to you!

One thing to consider is if your particular market already has a hyper-local site that is well-entrenched.

For example, the NJ market has some really unique features to it with regards to tax laws and if you own less than 3 rentals you do not have to charge certain taxes to the guest if you don't use a platform that collects funds on your behalf. This has fed a market for local websites catering to these owners that specifically does not collect funds from guests so that owners can avoid the taxes. These local sites are enormously popular. 

Google your area as if you were a person looking to stay there but not in a hotel, like "xyz beach rental condo" or "xyz beach weekly summer rental". Look at the sites that are not airbnb/vrbo and see what the top ones are that keep popping up. It may pay to list on another local platform that caters only to your market.

Good luck!

What is the SPECIFIC LANGUAGE they use in the HOA rules? You may be able to keep the existing lock on the door unlocked and add an additional lock for example. Try to read the rules with an eye towards getting what you want instead of trying to adhere to what you think they want you to do.

To build on #4 in @Marshall Leipprandt's answer, a newbie tends to get too caught up in this. I certainly did.

How is a newbie supposed to know if a deal is a "good" deal? An experienced investor with 50 properties and systems/employees to streamline it has different ideas of what a good deal is vs. a part-time investor with a full-time job looking at their first purchase. Finding a deal and then letting it slip away because it doesn't meet some arbitrary rule you read about (like the 1% rule, 20% rule, 50% rule, and so on) can be silly if your alternative is keeping cash in a checking account making .01% interest.

Look at your alternatives for the money you're investing, that is your comparison on whether a deal is good for you. However your education is going to cost you, so consider that if your first investment doesn't have the greatest ROI then that's the price of your education so the second one is.

Bolt the TVs to the wall with a dedicated TV mount. It will free up space on top of the dressers and with the right locking mechanism will make them difficult to take if you are worried about that.

Maybe you could put a max cap on included usage in the lease, such as all electricity usage over $300/month will be charged and withheld from the security deposit.

OP said "the seller wants to back out within 24 hours of signing the PSA". In NJ there is what is known as an attorney review period. Basically the assumption is that people signing a contract have 3 BUSINESS days to have their attorneys review the contract and they can back out for essentially any reason. At the end of 3 business days, the real estate contract becomes fully binding unless an attorney disapproves.

Not sure how the rest of the states operate but that may be relevant here.

What about wall unit? Some people have a hole framed out in the wall like a window, put molding around it and stick an A/C unit inside that looks like a window unit called a through-the-wall unit. It is permanently bolted into the wood framing. In fact I've seen Wifi remote controlled window units so you could still control them remotely if you wanted to make sure they were off if the home was empty. Some people use window units in the hole too I think. Like this unit:

https://www.lowes.com/pd/LG-11...

Negative on the bedjet. I bought one, returned it. It is not an AC unit for your bed, basically a glorified fan with heater option. If you don't use special sheets then both people in the bed, assuming King/Queen, share the same bedjet output. The special sheets are very expensive. There are filters in the unit to filter the air, and since they are running 8 hours per day and are small they clog up. Any of the bed cooling solutions are for personal use only, I would not use for a rental. Definitely would not use any of the water based ones.