All Forum Posts by: Jo Zhou

@Bjorn Ahlblad: you are right, how could I never think about how they would go shopping, do laundry, drive etc. Since they are on time with rent all the time, I never get the chance or need to see them. My PM told me that they cannot take care of the house any more, the dogs pee inside, The carpet needs to go, the concrete needs to be treated. I am preparing for the worst of the condition of the house. 

I read the through the forum, people suggest PM to inspect the property every year. Maybe we should do that to all the future tenants. If we know their situation early, maybe we could save them lots of money for paying our rent. Cheaper place might be better for them. I even think in the beginning they would be better off to buy a mobile home than renting our property. San Diego has some really nice mobile home park, they are not that expensive back in 2013. If they allow me to look at their financials back then, maybe it would be better today. All of these are only my wishful thinking. I really wish their situation won’t  be like today and it can be planned. 

@Aaron Linden, I have to agree with Dan, he is in Poway, California, we are in the same area. The rent is very high, this one is $2300 a month. I won’t be able to send additional donation to them. That is on top of the lost rent. I cannot afford to do it. 

@Dan H., thank you for sharing your story. I see you have a kind ❤️, we all want to help, but we don’t want life long free haircut for rental payment. Right now, the couple said they would move out on April 2. I hope there would be a government agency to take them, but my gut feeling is not. Hopefully, it is just me thinking too much.

Wow, thank you for all of your advises, specially to @@to point out specific organizations that may help the tenant in this situation. Thank you for @Jay Hinrichs and @Bill F. that you understand I really want to help them in my capacity. Thank you for @Mike M., @Cara Lonsdale and @Reed Kelly, @Rod D. to remind me of separating charity and business. I really agree with you because I am not in any position to have a charity. 

See, I want to do both, help them but not become a charity. However, it seems that I cannot do both. There are still several days by April 2, I will keep you post where the things go. I will reach out those agencies and organizations to see what they can do for them.  

@Mike M and @Rod D. you are questioning whether I should be in the rental business or not. Sure, I will think about it because I accidently become the landlord at the first place. Also, would you suggest something better and still passive? So far, I can see, at least, in this business, I could choose to do the right things, I thought. 

Hi, everybody, could you give me some advises for my situation?

I have an older couple (in their mid 70s, they are in the wheel chairs), they have been paying the rent on time for 5 years. Lately, they have been late for rent because they were running out of money. They have secured loans from some veteran credit union to pay the last 5 months rents. Their lease will end by March 31, 2018. At first, they said they would move to live with their children, then they said they would move to a mobile home, yesterday, they were crying to my property manager, they want to stay 2 more days until some government facility would take them. They are donating all their belongings to the salvation army. Of course, we allow them stay free for 2 days. However, I wonder if they have no place to go, what would we do? Evict them? We don't want to through them on the street, they are really nice and decent people. What else would we do to help them? We cannot provide the free rent too long because we have a mortgage to pay also.

Does anybody have similar situation? What will it end up? I have property manager to handle this sad situation, but she will ask us what we want to do eventually. So what will be our bottom line? Not hurting the tenants, not hurting us too?

Thank you.

Hi, Justin

I really appreciated your opinion. You have helped me on other topics, too. I got your reasons not to do the refinance for this property. Sure, I will not refinance this property and leave it as is until I could find a 1031 exchange property as Dan suggested to upgrade it to a better property. I feel it is hard to find also. Thank you again!

Thank you Dan for the reply. You are right, the property was originally purchased not for investment purpose. We lived in it and turned it into rental. I totally agreed what you said, this is not a good investment property. Since it is in a good location, if we do some renovation or upgrade (the inside is old, need updating), the rent could be up to $2100 around. So you are suggesting 1031 exchange. While, I have a hard time to find any property to be break even at current market around my area. Mabye you are an experienced investor, you could find better deals, I am new to investing, may need some advise. Thank you anyway.

Hi, Friends,

I have a condo valued at 350K, the loan balance is $154K. I have a 30 years fixed rate at 3.875% on it now. I anticipatethat the rate will go up in the future years. I am thinking to cashout refinance it. My option is 

1. Take out $60k, then I have a break even cashflow. To payoff my HELOC line of $60k at 5.25% interest only payment.

2. Take out 75% of the LTV, $262k, I will have a negative $300 cashflow each month. Payoff $60k HELOC, then have $42.5k on hand

3. Take out 80% of the LTV,$280k, I will have a negative $387 cashflow each month. Payoff $60k heloc, then have $60k on hand.

The new rate will be higher than what I had 3.875%, around 4.125%~4.375%. 

What would you do? To keep more cash on hand, or keep the property breakeven. I am located in San Diego, California. How should I think what is the best things to do? 

Thank you very much for any insights.

Hi, Justin, I just pulled the county records: it said that it has 2 kitchens, it says it is a deplux with 2 units. Numbers of rooms match the rooms in the house. The current family had elder people living in the unit since they bought. The neighbor knew the 2nd addition was permitted, the kitchen was added on later. (Not permitted)

I think it will be fine if we live there and rent the 1/1 unit out. Probably nobody will complaint. But if we rent it to 2 different families, I don't know if it will be fine. 

I plan to put my mother in law in the 1/1 unit and rent the 4/2 unit 2000sqft out because I love my current house and hate to move. Not sure if it will be easy to rent a 2000 sqft house in that area. Since you say you only buy 0.75 of the house price, which means there will be almost nothing in the market meeting this criteria except you are a guru. 

Since you don't recommend waiting either, I want to good use of the capital, too. What should I do now? 

Hi, Bruce, it is nice to know you are in San Diego and have similar house. I believe your house does look like the one that we are looking at now. The utility and address cannot be separated. This is a drawback compared to a normal duplex. 

@Carrianne Mucho: Thank you very much that you explained to me how such thing could happen. I wonder if the city building department lost its records, whose responsibility it would be. I am pretty sure that they lost some important records when they converted paper records into microfilm. For example, the city didn't have any work permit for my current house which was built in 1967. Luckily, a large addition were permitted and have records in 2004. 

For the house that I am working to buy, there is no floor plan to the addition, they only have site plan for the addition, so it is so hard to tell it was a 2nd story addition. I feel it would be impossible to get approved without a floor plan. It passed the inspection, it was hard to say there was no 2nd floor because the added bathroom was in the second floor. The city had to see it in the 2nd floor, but without any records showing that. Whose fault it was? 

I plan to go to the county assessor office to find out more info. Waiting for seller's release form, otherwise, it won't release any records to non owner. I have been to city building department, not any luck. I didn't find anything useful.