All Forum Posts by: Justin Fox

@Rob Chiang

Life is a lot easier if you don't concern yourself with other individual's finances.  It's like politics or religion, the longer the conversation goes, the more entrenched they become in their side or views, and same for you.  Which is fine, they probably think the effort we put into RE is stupid and too much work.

Most people don't think about the fact that it will take them 13 years to pay off their 2-3K credit card, let alone some catastrophic misfortune leading to joblessness.  It's just not worth the time.  Because at the end of the day, being good with money is work.  It takes planning and restraining oneself against impulse, and this feels like severe pain to most and they can't tolerate it.  This is true whether or not you actively invest.

To answer your question though, I simply charge the appropriate amount of $$ to prevent deferred maintenance.  Above all else, people enjoy a well-maintained rental property.

@Rob Chiang

@Aaron Gordy  I agree.  But the only real defense in front of the appraisal board is that their appraised value is too high versus actual sales data.  If one shows up with no ammo, they're stuck like chuck.  Houses were selling over-asking with "LVP", pre-fab cabinets and drywall islands, lol.

When we build a house (even in my dinky little county) the AD shows up as soon as it's dried in.

There are also a lot, and I mean a lot, of people who think that filling out the AD's questionnaire about their home's value and that having a high appraised tax value is good for their property's value overall.

@Sumit Sehgal what's the valuation from the appraisal district versus MLS comps?

Unless you can buy the lots in question I wouldn't bother.  Just because you buy other properties high doesn't mean these owners will sell high, or that it won't get handed down to less desirable family members.

You can only control what you own.

Get with an experienced, local real estate attorney to draft not only your lease, but application and lawful tenant criteria.  We always provide a criteria and application up front (before showing) and it weeds out anyone that would attempt to waste my time.  

I discriminate against falsified information, unverifiable identity, negative feedback from prior landlord(s), unqualified types of income, not enough income, unpaid judgments, evictions, certain criminal convictions and a history of poor money management resulting in late payments.  These disqualifying categories are not mutually exclusive, so any combination can be used to reject an applicant.

Immutable physical attributes or disabilities do not concern me.

As far as Service and ES animals go, If the accommodation is reasonable, there is a verified disability, the animal is, in fact, needed, the animal is taken care of medically and there's a proven nexus between the individual and animal then I see no problem.  Any area that has a huge swath of ESA abusers will eventually see an upward pressure on rents anyway.

As far as housing goes, the cost is too expensive right now.   If buying becomes cheaper then I can shift to build->sell mode.  Otherwise I'll just keep getting 1,000's per month for simply having money and keep trying to buy someone's grandma's house.  All of the easy money I've gotten is due to poor government policy, so I'm all for it lol.  Just got an EBT card for 1,000.00 dollars lmao.  Wish I wouldn't have paid off my student loans.

I agree with @Miller McSwain and @Tommy Parker, Innago is the best available.

Most importantly, the customer service is top notch.

You can have tenants pay online, you can also have the $2 ACH fee charged to you as well.  I'll eat the fee if it gets them all to pay online.

You can have custom late fees for different properties or use the same one for all.

Haven't really used the maintenance ticketing but it would be helpful I'm sure.
I like the messaging system so you can send out HVAC filter change reminders and etc, but it would be nice if it could be scheduled automatically.  I haven't seen anywhere where it can be.

Their online application/lease process is nice.

I have the application url linked from my business page and it works great.

The rent schedule is easy to modify for pro-rated rents if you allow tenants to start mid-month.

It's a great product all around.

What do your reserves look like?  Would they not take them into consideration with 6+ months of expenses?

3 - 4% of the property's value per year in income. That's after mortgage, property taxes, home owner's insurance, flood insurance, HOA, any warranties and 2% of the home's value per year for repair/capex.

Equity through paydown and any appreciation is a cherry on top, I muh $$ now!

Savings account interest is noice right now though.  All this zero-effort money hitting my account has me feeling like a white trash Bruce Wayne.

@Michael Wooldridge

I think the reasoning is because when you quash demand through rates, you signal to markets to retract supply while simultaneously making any potential production ramp-up cost prohibitive.  The road to hell is paved with...

The next 12 months is going to be interesting.