All Forum Posts by: Joe Jor

Couple more details, I missed.  I had plumber replace the values in 2014.  I did many of them over the summer.  The whole HW radiator system has a single hosebib; A hose was hooked up to drain into the main sewer access.  To fill, we just turned the HW system water feed on again and got it up to pressure.

Joe

@Jim K.  Sorry about the typo, I meant **valves.**  The 90 degree right angle radiator valves were swapped out on many other radiators; this one was not modified.  The valve on the cold radiator were replaced in 2014 when the valve started leaking; it had been working since.

It is a monoflow system as it is similar to the one shown in the video at 3:30 - 5:00.

Joe

Once the heat started being used this winter, the tenant reports that a single radiator that will not get hot; all the other radiators work perfectly.  I called a plumber out.  He diagnosed that the return pipe is blocked.  His suggestion was to rip out the plaster walls to trace the pipe to either replace the piping or determine the location of the blockage so it can be addressed.

This sounds very drastic and expensive to me.  Has anyone heard of another way to jar a blockage loose?  The pipe is a 3/4 inch; there are no drains on individual radiator runs in the basement ... only a master drain for the boiler.

Joe

@Thomas Hartman, as others have said, it depends on your goals. With that said, if you want to buy in the area instead of remote, you could target something in Westchester that reduces your "rent." This may actually cashflow, but if your PITI+expenses payment is less than your rent, you have reduced your expenses while building equity.

Joe

@Edly Destine

Those tenants who work the legal system to not pay rent are known as professional tenants.  As Alex said, they exist in every locale with very tenant-friendly laws.  My father has first-hand experience with them in Baltimore MD.  Develop a strong screening process and should should reduce the risk that plague.  Similarly, they aren't going to be able to afford a $2k+ rental, so their income should weed them out.

Joe

Howdy all, I am an Alpha Geek, a fullstack developer (Microsoft C# .NET) and a Data Architect.  I have 15 years experience in the insurance space.  I LOVE solving challenging tech problems.

In real estate, I am doing MFH in Westchester County NY. This is the side item right now and looking to offset living expenses.  I am fairly handy; there is something to be said for building something physical rather than just banging out code.

As a data guy, it seems one could build a neural net to predict which houses are most likely to go up for sale and reach out to those folks before they cross the Rubicon to the MLS. Still in the theory phase, but working on ingesting all the the tax rolls from Westchester into a Database.

Joe

Don't eat yellow snow :)

@Brittany Lischinsky, welcome to BP.  I have 2 properties, both in New Rochelle.  They were both house hacks.  The first did not originally cashflow, however, the numbers halved my rent.  So while it wasn't directly making me money, it was lowering my expenses. 

The second was a pocket deal from someone I knew.  This property cash-flowed about 6%.  Not great, but doable.  In order for me to get to a number that made sense, I had to move in for a year so that I could take advantage of a lower down payment and interest rate.

I routinely troll the MLS, but similar to you, there haven't been very many deals that make sense over the last 1+ years; I am only considering properties that don't require major surgery. I suspect that this was in large part due to the limit on SALT; as such, the multifamily market was overheated as non-investors were purchasing so at least 1/2 of their property taxes would be deductible.

In the last month, as the market has cooled a little; there have been some marginal deals.  I suspect the volume of deals that numerically make sense will continue to grow, if the market continues to cool.

Joe

@Matt Ten, one other point.  You should verify the rent that the agent/broker suggests on RentOMeter or a similar service.  I believe it is a 3 bedroom.  RentOmeter suggests that the Average Rent is around 2600 and Median Rent is 2800.  The Rent you propose is almost 61% higher.

Joe