All Forum Posts by: Julie Haveman

I just signed up for rental hero. It is very reasonably priced and will make tax time so much easier. You can also store your receipts there.

I wonder if they would do a 15 year loan with a 30 year amortization at like 6%. It's hard to cashflow with a 15 year amortization. I would figure for each duplex $100 each per month for maintenance and $100 per month for capex. I would also raise rents and get rid of cleaning lady. Owner finance is so great that I would try to make the numbers work! Offer a number that works, they might just take it!

Do you have enough extra in your 401k to take an early withdrawal? It sounds like it would be worth it!

Hi Andrew, We are also a husband and wife team in Michigan. We have been doing buy and holds for about 5 years now. We have 9 properties right now. They are all duplexes, so 18 units. We have are rolling all the profits into buying more. Welcome and wishing you much success!

We had the same situation recently. Very low rents that had never been raised. We gave the current tenants copies of the new leases with rent increasing by $100 after 60 days and $100 more 60 days after that. I put the amounts right in the new leases. They both signed them and are paying $200 a month more than when we bought them 8 months ago. That duplex is in Wyoming, MI.

We recently bought a duplex in May. They were getting $610 of rent on each side. The market rent was about 900. We sent out letters and raised the rent $100.00 2 months after we purchased it. Then another $100 the third month after purchase. That gets the rent right now to $810 per unit. Both sides stayed, and they're both paying the higher rent.

I would ask the property management company that you will be using. If they are in the area, They should have a pretty good idea of what the market rate is.

I agree with Matt. We have nine duplexes in Michigan, and I figure $100 for maintenance and $100 for capex per month. This figure has done us really well over the years. I also noticed you didn't have water/sewer in your estimate, and who will be responsible for lawn and snow? Most of our units we do make the tenants are responsible for that. It still looks like a good deal to me if you add these numbers in.

We just had the exact same issue. Only in the toilet we had fixed they found a toy and some baby wipes. Our bill came to $165, I sent the tenant a text message with the information, and told them to add that to the next months rent. We just received the rent, and it was included.

We recently had this same situation on a duplex we bought. Both sides had lived there 7-8 years and never had their rent raised. They were paying $600 per month market rent was about $900. We sent them both letter introducing ourselves and stating that we have some rentals that are section 8 and we can not charge more for section 8 than our other rentals, so unfortunately the rent had to be raised. We left it the same for the first 6 weeks. Then raised it to $725. The next month we raised it to $825. They both stayed and are paying the higher rent. Now we will just raise one a year to slowly get to market rates.