All Forum Posts by: Keith Guntert

My first question is what kind of damage to a house can cost 50k? I have been rehabbing for years and I have yet to spend 30k much less 50. I would love to go over that with you!

Renting to students is another matter. There are different kinds of students, ones that have parents that pay for everything and ones that work. There are also different academic students, for example those that are engineering or science majors usually are not the partying kiind. Those in liberal arts tend to be more social. My suggestion would be to rent to students who are responsible and working.

Sometimes you may have several students wanting to share a house. You need to be flexible with individuals as one person moves out and a replacement comes in. I have rented by the room and charged a flat rental fee, which is another way to increase your rents per month. Demand a good deposit and make a lease with specific rules pertainig to conduct and parties.

Let me expand on the point that was already made by Joshua about buying correctly.

In this market of lower property values there is no excuse for you not to learn to buy property at 50% of current value.

Not only will you benefit by having better cash flow on a monthly basis with your rentals, you will also be in a better position with equity when the market rebounds in the coming years.

My second contribution has been repeated by almost everyone here. CHECK OUT your tenants and see if they have any bad history before you rent to them.

I punched in cheep corplast signs
in my search engine and found lots of places that have signs printed.$1.20 each was the cheepest.Find a local one by adding your city to the end of that search.

You can even get cheeper ones by buying blank ones and writing them yourself. I get more responce that way because people feel they are dealing with the owner and not some company.

It depends on your state laws...I get a tenant out in 3 weeks. I get a first last and security deposit to cover my eviction costs. A quick prior eviction check at the court house will tell me if they play games with the rent in the past. credit check tells me if they pay their bills. Background check tells me if they value laws. If that all checks out...rent the unit.