All Forum Posts by: Jose Fernandez

Nathan thanks for your response. The security deposit was $1,200, but here in Florida, attorney's fees and costs are recoverable to the prevailing party in cases concerning security deposits. (FL statute 83.49.)  If the landlord is making a claim against the tenant's security deposit, he/she must send a written notice to the tenant's "last known address" within 30 days, via certified mail.

In this case, since the tenant did not pay her last month's and stopped communicating with me, I obtained an eviction judgment. The tenant did not challenge the eviction, but apparently hired an attorney who filed a few documents in the eviction case, but I never received any of these documents.

Later I learned that the attorney convinced the tenant to assign her rights to make a claim for the security deposit (presumably because she could not pay the attorney) to an LLC that the attorney created. As previously stated, I never received a copy of the notice regarding last known address change for security deposit. More than 1 year after obtaining the eviction judgment, the LLC sued me for not returning the security deposit and/or not sending the notice to impose a claim on security deposit to the LLC's address in another Florida county.

Though I sent the notice to the tenant's last known address, via certified mail, I cannot prove that the attorney never sent me the address change notice and therefore run the risk of losing the case at trial. If this happens, the attorney will probably seek thousands of dollars in attorney's fees and costs, far greater than the security deposit.

This is incredibly frustrating since this attorney filed many of these type of cases against landlords throughout Florida!!!

I've been obsessed the past decade on trying to understand why some people become financially free, while the majority of the population is living paycheck to paycheck.

I just launched a book called Baby Money Soldiers, which is a book on personal finance, that shares the story on how we all need to be "Generals" of our financial army. It's a great way to teach young adults about money and finance.

I would love any feedback on what you think are the main forces holding people back from becoming financially free. I'm always trying to create content that will help people make more money, and start driving towards their soul purpose.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and to share your thoughts.

I believe People With Financial Intelligence Can Change The World For The Better".

@Dave Foster would be a great person to talk to/work with, he really knows his stuff on 1031 exchanges.  

Hello everyone, nice to virtually meet you all.

This is my first post on BP, and I write professionally, so I apologize for the longwindedness. A little background: My wife and I have gotten very interested in REI recently. We're learning all we can while simultaneously searching for our first investment (I'm on book 3 of 5 that I picked out to read). We both attended University of Central Florida and lived in a house that my parents bought for my sister and I while we got through college, and the idea of student rentals intrigued us. We both still live in Orlando and are familiar with the UCF area. UCF is now the second largest university in the US with 70,000 or so students, and apartments are springing up everywhere. It seems safe to assume there's a market, but obviously we'll need some more research to confirm that.

We both have degrees in graphic design and work for Universal designing theme parks (with some on-site experience for both of us). I also have an MBA. We feel like this gives us a pretty good background to start, but by no means do we think we know everything we need to yet.

The area around UCF has improved quite a bit in the last 10 years and home prices have risen considerably, but it seems like there are still some promising areas to find deals. We came up with a few questions we've been wondering.

- Of course it's always important to find great deals, but how "great" is necessary for student rentals? I.e. We'd love to buy low and add value, but if the numbers seem to work on a turnkey property, is there a reason not to go that route?

- How risky are student tenants? We were pretty good kids in college, but of course we had parties and made our share of messes. I can handle some college shenanigans, but I'd also love to hear some horror stories if anyone has one.

- What sort of turnover can we expect? The idea of a natural turnover seems more of a benefit than a drawback to me, but I'd love to know some rules of thumb for just how frequent can be expected. 

Any other best practices or things to consider are of course welcome. Is there anyone with experience in this niche? Or anyone with experience in Orlando? We'd love to chat any time.

Michael

Should I list a property over The Weeknd of 7/4 or wait until the following weekend? More people are off, but will they be busy and the listing get lost in the sauce of festivities?

Hello everyone,

Sometimes, we have prospective tenants who are LGBT couples. Since I am not very familiar with their experiences and perspectives, I would love to hear from those of you who have had interactions or experiences with LGBT tenants. Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!