All Forum Posts by: Kevin C.

Yes, we need to evict because she got divorced in December. January rent was a few days late. February rent was 3 weeks late. March rent is now 4 weeks late. This is too much house for her to pay for without her ex husband's assistance, and we need to get a good renter in there. What pushed us over the edge into eviction territory is that she has been dodging our calls so we have been unable to deal with the situation amicably.

Hi there. We have a tenant who has not paid rent for March (Due March 1) and we need to get her out of the house. We have tried accommodating her (She's going through a messy divorce) but she has just taken advantage of us and it's time to get her out. We sent a notice to quit last week, Wednesday, via certified mail signature required, and regular first class mail. She still has not picked up the certified mail, but did confirm via text message that she has received regular notice. 

I mailed the notice on March 22 and the notice indicates that she has until the 31st to vacate. She has indicated to us that she will not be out by the 31st because that's not enough time. We have described the consequences of not moving in great detail, but it looks like we're going to have to move forward with a formal eviction process. So my question is, what is our next step? If she is not out by Monday morning, what do I need to do?

I have read a lot of conflicting information on the eviction process here so I want to make sure I go in knowing as much as possible, and hopefully with as up-to-date info as I can.

Thanks in advance. Hopefully I can get a clearer picture of the process here.

Wow Paul. Thanks for the great insight. Property A's tenants will be up for renewal in January. The house isn't a burden financially, it just isn't make us any money. But you're right, it is an asset that isn't costing us anything and is slowly being paid off for free. Even including eventual maintenance, we likely won't be at a loss. Maybe we will consider keeping it. It's a nice family house in an OK area. We'll have to consider everything you mentioned. Thanks a ton for your insight!

Yeah I went to Tech and it has grown significantly since I was there. 

Is http://www.cosl.org/catalog.aspx the website you're referring to? If so, it looks like there won't even be any tax sales until June of next year for Washington County, unless I'm misreading it. Is that correct?

@Jacob White - I agree with your sentiment on Prop A. I think we'll contact the tenants and see if they want to purchase. Otherwise, we will just list it when their lease is up (Will want to make some cosmetic repairs before listing). 

We definitely will jump on anything in NWA if we see it. The problem is just seeing it at all. We're still new to this, so I wasn't aware of tax sales. I'll investigate that today. My thought is just that I could go to Russellville today and find several properties worth buying but it's difficult to do the same here in NWA. 

Property A is in Russellville, actually. Dirt cheap properties and a good rental base because of the lower incomes / young families just starting out. 

Right now we are just socking everything away into Vanguard, actually. But I'd like to acquire some more properties as well, I just don't know where to go and how to finance them.

Hi there from Arkansas! I have posted a couple of threads here regarding our situation, but I'm going to do it again in the hopes of getting some new opinions.

We currently own 2 properties. 

Property A we purchased in 2010 for 100,000. We currently owe about $87k @4.75%. Our PITI is $788 because of an escrow shortage and it is rented for $900/month with good tenants who have been here for 2 years. It is an older house with mostly older equipment / needs some work. The problem is that it doesn't really cash flow enough to put any money into it. It will needs a new HVAC in the next 3 years I estimate and will need new ductwork at the same time. The fascia boards need replaced and gutters need installed. It has some wood rot issues in the crawl space as well, though the rot has been pretty much stopped through fixing the leaks causing the rot. We have rented it out twice and both times it rented within a week, so no problem renting it again. The home is probably worth between 100 and 105k. Not much money to be made if we sell it.

Property B we purchased in 2015 for $75,000. We currently owe about [email protected]%. The PITI is $420 and it is rented for $950. This house is in the city where we currently live with a BOOMING real estate market. Of course, because it's booming, there aren't many deals to be found and the ones that do come up are snatched before we can think of getting to them. Conservative estimates put this home's value at $100,000 very easily. A local real estate agent estimated $140-$150 based on similar sales but that seems crazy to me. Anyway, everything in this house is new. New roof, hvac, carpet, paint, tile, appliances, etc..It still needs some cosmetic work to the exterior but with its monthly revenue, we could afford to put money into it pretty easily if we needed to after this current tenant vacates. This one did not rent that easily 8 months ago, but since then things have really taken off around here and rentals in this school district are few and far between. I think we could easily have this house rented in 5 days for $1250 when (if) the current tenant vacates / renews lease.

We currently rent our primary residence for $1,100/month.

So, that is our financial situation. My question is, where do we go from here? As I said, deals in our current area are difficult to come by. The profits are larger, but we are definitely in a bubble and would be paying a premium to purchase here right now. It makes me nervous because I know the property values are inflated right now and I fear a huge decrease in value in the next 5 years. I've been thinking about it, and I'm tossing around the idea of investing in property A's city, which is about 2 hours from here. We still know people in that city who check on our house for us, and it's close enough that we can easily drive by once a month / can do maintenance ourselves. This city has one of the largest colleges in the state (2nd or 3rd) but has very low property values for the most part. I can easily find a 3/2 in a lower-middle income neighborhood for $50k and rent it for $700 or more. Obviously nobody is getting rich at those prices, but it is good stable income and the property values aren't going to get much lower. This is a city where lots of the college graduates stick around because it's a good place to raise a family and it's close enough to Little Rock that many of them commute from this small town to the city to work every day. 

The alternative is to invest here in NWA, which will require much more aggressive searching and much higher down payments because the properties are much more expensive. We will not be able to acquire them as quickly here as we would in property A's city and the margins would still be slim if we're using MLS deals.

We don't have anything for a down payment right now, but will by January. We do have considerable equity in property B though, which we could use to our advantage to purchase new properties if we need to. 

So that's our situation and my questions. I know it got long, sorry :) What do we do with our two properties? Where do we invest? Do we just stick our money into IRAs and 401ks? Help!

Thanks in advance :)

Short and sweet: These tenants were approved for our rental based on the husband's income. The wife did not work at the time, possibly still doesn't. I was contacted by the husband today asking me if it would be possible to remove him from the lease and leave his wife on it. Unless she now has a job, I don't see how she could possibly pay for our house. We are going to the property on Monday for an inspection so we can talk to the wife then, but what should we do in this situation? If she has the income, do we terminate the old lease and write a new one? This would give us a chance to bump the rent $100  or more. Or do we force him to stay on it because he did sign it, after all? 

Hi Clayton. I'm not opposed to the TK route, but I enjoy working on my houses myself. My eyes are on the houses in decent neighborhoods that need 10k of work to make it rentable. Mentally, it's hard for me to stomach paying someone else to do the work when we can do it ourselves, you know?

In regards to remote investing opportunities, I'm sure it's for some people, but I don't know if it's for me. I like being able to drive by my properties to make sure they're being taken care of / be able to show up in person to do repairs. I know that is an income limiting mindset to have, but that's where I'm at right now. Remote investing also gives me pause, because I'd be afraid on buying in a bad neighborhood, hiring a bad property manager, not being able to feel tenants out in person before renting to them, etc. What are your thoughts on my main concerns? Feel free to PM me.

Fair enough. Just trying to do what we can to get ahead of any potential issues. We'll see what's going on this week.

As the title states, we just found out today from the neighbors next to one of our properties that the tenants in our house are getting divorced. This poses a very serious potential problem for us because only the husband is employed. The wife is a stay at home mom. I want to head off any potential issues before they become more serious problems.

We were thinking of calling them up and telling them we need to come by to do the 6 month inspection (which is true) and while there, try to start a conversation with them on how they like the house, are there any improvements that can be made to it, are they happy, etc.. and reinforce what we've told them before, which is that if they have a problem, to please come to us and not just ignore the problem. That if they come to us before it becomes a huge issue, we can normally resolve it amicably. This would give us a chance to inspect the house and give them a chance to let us know if they're planning on abandoning the house. 

To complicate matters, if they are leaving, I want them gone now because in 2 months, the house will not be as desirable as it is now (Too many renters, not enough houses right now with school starting). 

Thoughts? How would you approach this situation if you had a heads up that you might be losing a tenant mid-lease?