All Forum Posts by: Larry Lenz

@J. Martin

The financing I used was with a local credit union here in West Virginia that serves about 5/6 counties. In regards to the washer/dryer, the layout of this duplex is a little different than what you might be thinking. One side (the tenant's side) is about 1000 sq ft and other side (my side) is only about 600 sq ft. There is a basement that has a garage in it. Inside entry to the basement/garage/laundry area is only on the tenant's side. My side is over a crawl space. With that, all utilities down there are part of tenant's bill. It is their washer and dryer too. I borrow the garage door opener from them when I have some laundry to do or put some stuff in a storage room that is there. They use it mainly for the garage and laundry. So all of that being the case, putting a coin-op down there is not something I think I would want to do. I will keep it in mind for other places I look at though, thank you for the idea.

As far as the tenants themselves go, I think I really lucked out with who I found. They are a young couple, one going to school and other is a youth counselor with two small dogs. A few of many reason they have been great tenants are:

I thought the apartment they rented to them was clean. I was wrong after I saw it after they moved in. They spent a couple hours just cleaning out the stove.

When they were plugging in the dryer, the outlet did not work correctly so they fixed it and I found out only after I was borrowing it.

They asked if they could paint a room at their cost and would paint it back at their cost if I asked them to when they left. It looked great.

So I definitely understand that I need to stay professional and we have been professional towards each with some friendship forming in this case based on the circumstances. However this is unique and I would not do this with any other rentals. I hope @Nicole A. that I never become jaded :) and I am kind of living on the edge with trying out certain things with tenants like pets and letting them paint (which I know a lot people will not let them do). I even mentioned to them that they better do a good job painting or they will ruin it for future tenants.

@Brandon Turner

I am honored that I saw this post on Facebook. Thank you so much for the compliment.

Hello,

I agree with Jean, to better analysis this deal we need to know a few more numbers, i.e expected taxes, ins, repairs. What about financing if you cannot do owner financing? Are there any utilities that you have to pay? Using the 50% rule? After that we could tackle the tenant issues etc. once we have better numbers.

I had this happen to me when I moved from Buffalo with the same situation as Jennifer. I had a cheap PM (buddy of mine) to help with finding a tenant and since I am up there, once in a while, if I need to I can check up on the property. I am still in West Virginia (near Morgantown) and have started looking in Buffalo for more opportunities. Since it seems you have a great network set up in Martinburg, that is more than half the battle to real estate. Plus with your wife always at home, you have a great setup to succeed there. And if the market is ripe for the picking, I say go for it. Good luck!

@J. Martin

Yes it is a fixed rate since it is a primary residence through a local credit Union.

Buying a 4-plex as a next OO is something I will be looking into when the time comes.

There is a washer/dryer hook up in the basement that tenants are using. They are nice enough to let me use them too!

Thanks for the comments

Hello, I wanted to share a purchase of a duplex I made in September.

I started looking for a place to rent in April. I started searching and found a couple of places that I may have liked. While looking, the notion of me buying a multi-unit property so that I could live rent free came around. Being in early May, I had not yet starting reading BP nor thinking I wanted to become a "real" real estate investor.

There were two properties I found on the MLS that seemed like a good deal and that I was very interested in. Being that I was going to live there, the emotional part of wanting to live in a specific area and quirks, etc did play a part in my final decision. So the property I ended up going for was in a neighborhood I was more familiar with and the size of the duplex a bit smaller than the other. I also wanted to move fairly quick on the closing and the owner of other property was going through a bankruptcy so I thought the one I was buying would not take as long.... well 105 days to close was a lot longer than the 45-60 days my agent thought it would take...

The offer and counter - The house was originally listed on the MLS for 84,900. A few days before my offer the price was reduced 79,900. It was on the market for a few months by this time too. With the help of my agent, the first offer we made was 72,000. They countered and I do not recall the exact amounts but my final counter of $76,100 was accepted.

The numbers:

Bank financing was 2.90% for 20 yrs with 15% down - payment $358/mo

Taxes are $100/mo for the first year then half that for being OO the following year

Insurance is $43/mo

Total expenses = $501/mo

Rental income = $650/mo

$650-$501 = $149/mo extra, which covers my utilities! The renters pay all of their utilities. Plus $50 more after my taxes go down in 2015.

A great part was that after my closing costs, I did not have any more expenses to find and get tenants moved in... who moved in only a week after I did! If I have expenses they will come out of pocket for now but when I move I should get enough rent from my side to cover all of that and a little extra.

While waiting and waiting for the closing is when I started reading BP. So looking at it from an investor's hat, I was fortunate that the numbers worked out pretty well. A couple of things in hindsight that I might have done differently are; a longer loan term so my payment could have been lower and try to haggle the price down a little bit more than I did. But based on outcome, I think I did pretty good and already have some lessons learned from the process!

Thanks for reading.

Welcome to BP! Like you I hope to absorb all I can from the pros on here. Good luck to you!

I am fan of #1. I am curious though if having your picture on the card like #4 adds a good personal touch or just out of style these days?

Hello and Welcome to BP and the forums! You comment about the request from Josh and Brandon hit home for me too. Good luck to you.

Hello all,

I have been an avid reader for a while now and know (and read) that I needed to start the next step which I am finally doing now.

I was born and raised in Buffalo, NY and am currently living in Fairmont, WV. I have technically been a landlord for 13 years. In Buffalo, when I was in college, I decided to buy a 4 bedroom single family house (thanks mom for co-signing) and got 3 of my friends to move in with me as roommates. I lived there for about 8 years. I then moved to Atlanta for a few years and just recently to West Virginia last year. When I moved out of the house my mom then moved into it for a while. Just recently it is back into a full time rental.

My next property was a duplex I bought a few months ago here in West Virginia. I can actually thank my ex into helping/challenging me (long story there) into getting this property. This was before I became serious about real estate and getting the best deal. Plus I was going to be living there to so I had a bit more emotion at the time and being picky on where I wanted to live, etc. The good thing is that I did a pretty good job picking a place and am living rent free.

It was while I waiting to close on this duplex that something clicked and I then knew I wanted to get into real estate a lot more, perhaps even full time. I started researching real estate and found BP very quickly. One of the first things I read was the beginner's guide on here and have read a lot more since then including a few of books always mentioned in the podcasts. I have researched my area a lot and after I had closed on my duplex, I went out to get another property.

And ended up getting two properties... well one is still being held up by the bank because it is a short sale. They are two single family homes. They are the same seller and I bought them together to get a better deal. The other was in cash and I closed last month. I have renters moving into it this weekend. Yeah!

So that is my brief experience in real estate so far. My plans are to continue investing in buy and holds here in West Virginia. This would be considered rural however there is a small college here and high rental demand from gas/oil/coal workers too.

Being from Buffalo I want to get back to my roots and invest there too. I will soon look into really researching the market in Buffalo and hope to get into some buy and holds there. I have a couple of friends, the ones that were my roommates previously from above actually, that I got interested in real estate. By my suggestion, (backed up by a few people on this site) they are looking into buying a four-plex in the Buffalo area to get them started. They would live in one of the apartments and rent out the others.

My current goal in real estate is to get at least one property per year to buy and hold. Hopefully more than that as I start networking and get to know the business better. Another goal is to start networking with folks here on BP. I saw another member introduce themselves from Buffalo the other day and looking forward to getting in touch with the Buffalo group here on BP. I am not sure if I can get to the meet-up in January but we shall see. Maybe my friends can make it.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to really starting on my real estate adventure.