All Forum Posts by: Kyle Meyers

Send a request in writing and contact a lawyer. I am not sure what the laws are in your state, but in Indiana a landlord is required to provide a liveable space, which would require some of the repairs you noted. Code enforcement or a similar agency may also be able to help you.

If you look around on the forums you will see references to the 50% rule, for your deal this would mean you would have 1650 rents/month, 825 monthly expenses (maintenance, property management, insurance, vacancy, taxes, etc.) Then if your mortgage was 200-300, you would have 525-625 positive cashflow each month. This is just an estimate, it is difficult to know exactly what the numbers will be, but these numbers may help you determine if this deal sounds like you want to investigate it more.

Not exactly sure, but I think you need something called hurricane clips which I believe can be installed without taking the roof apart.

Thanks everyone. I think I will start advertising in the next couple days and have open house in a week and a half. I'll make sure to have a lot of applications and fliers available for everyone. I think it sounds much easier to take a picture of the id than scan or copy it, which is what I was planning on. A couple other questions for everyone:

1. When do you find is the best time for an open house? I was planning to do it on a Saturday, I don't know if I should try to start early in the morning or if most people are available in the middle of the day.

2. Do you put up signs around the neighborhood? Do you get open house signs or for rent signs?

Could you clarify what you mean by bad neighborhood? High crime? Drugs? Violence? Low income? Boarded up houses? Were there areas you would have considered worse than the area you were in? Just trying to see how people draw the line. Thanks for sharing.

I am getting close to having my new rental ready to lease and I am considering having an open house. I have some questions I have been wondering about and would love the input of more experienced landlords on.

The property is a duplex in Indianapolis, it should be ready to offer for rent in about a week. I was wondering when I should start marketing for the open house. I am planning to post ads online on several free listing sites. I would like to start advertising right away so I can get as many people to come to the open house as possible, but I don't want to have something delay the property from being ready and have advertised an open house date that I can't have. To solve this I thought of the following options:

1. Push the open house back one week so I have more time for unforeseen delays.

2. Don't advertise the property as an open house, just have a number to call, then when people call, do some pre-screening and tell them about the open house, this way I will have contact information for everyone so if I have to change the date I can call them.

3. Just advertise the open house for the planned date and if everything isn't ready I will just have the open house anyways. I don't think there is much that would have to be pushed back at this point, all the work is scheduled to be done early next week so there would be a few days buffer.

I also don't know how much lead time I should have for these ads, is a week and a half enough? too much?

My other concern is what to do once I have potential tenants viewing the property. I want to get a lot of applications in. I would like to collect applications with the $10 application fee and make copies of their recent paystubs and drivers license. In your experience, will people be willing to do this? Also, should I print the income requirements on the informational flyer I am going to hand out?

I really want to make this open house go well so I can find a tenant quickly, any help is greatly appreciated.

I have also wondered about the difference between low income and war zone areas. I try to look around and see how many houses are boarded up. I feel like it is ok to buy in an area that does not look amazing, as long as I know that going into the deal and I can see that there are not too many abandoned houses. I consider more than one in a few blocks too many. I would be curious to see how others draw the line to judge a war zone.

I did some looking around on their website and after completing a few forms, it seems they are still only working with managers with over 1000 units, I'm not quite to that point yet so I guess I don't have to try to decide whether or not I want to work with them.

I would avoid a SFH with a pool. It just seems like too much liability. I believe pools are the leading cause of death for children in the US, (not positive if I remember that right, but I know it is up there on the list). I would also expect that it lowers the likelihood of someone with children wanting to rent from you.

The article states they were evicted prior to this happening. I don't think that is the case here. I would recommend evicting your tenant and then following the proper abandonment of personal property laws for your location. You may need to speak with a lawyer to be sure exactly what your responsibilities are.