All Forum Posts by: Joey Fontenot III

Chuck

These are great tips on hardening your rentals. The rentals that i have are mostly in the lower end areas. I was wondering what you recommend for your kitchen. Do you have all electric appliances and what appliances do you provide? Do you recommend ceramic title floors throughout the entire house and do you prefer fans or light fixtures in the bedrooms? Thanks

Thanks everybody for the lively discussion. It seems to me that the issue of what vehicle to hold your properties in is a very debatable topic and also depends on how much money one would want to spend on this protection. I have heard from an old investor in my area that to ensure the maximum amount of protection one would want to hold title in a land trust ( if it is recognized by state law in your particular state) and use an LLC as your beneficiary of a trust. This provides a double layer of protection. My question is what should it cost to set up a land trust?? I know it costs $240 to set up an LLC in my state and In what instances should one use land trusts--I am thinking more for property that they want to hold long-term for cost reasons?

I have read through a bunch of posts about land trusts on BP and am getting mixed signals on their worth. I wanted to know if you guys are utilizing them? If so what benefits do they have for your particular real estate business and how much is costing to get them set up?

Thanks
Joey FONTENOT

I totally agree with you Rob.. I go for the houses in that 20 -30k price range that can be used for section 8 rentals and then if I want to sell them go with the owner finance route. I generally do this though in areas that are lower middle class.. i havent dealt with the War zone properties do you go for these if the price is right or generally stay away for the crack houses?

I've gotta potential tenant whom I am meeting with tommorrow to go through the screening process my plan is to check their background, criminal, and eviction history. In addition I am planning on checking on their proof of monthly income. The issue I am facing is they are just moving down to the area from up in Michigan and have not spent any time down in Alabama. Therefore what would be the best way using an online screening service to go through the process.. Possibly using a 50 state check or simply using the state of Michigan online for their history?

I am also curious if anybody else out there has had a potential tenant call them telling them they have the full month's rent and deposit and are ready to move in ASAP..Is this a good or bad thing?
Thanks

Jim,

I can qualify the statement by saying I recently picked up a house for a rental in my market and started marketing the property a week before I was set to close on the house and recieved 40+ phone calls and was able to have a tenant move in the day after I closed on the property paying a little over what I thought the rent rate should have been for the property

Thanks for all the replies.. so far I have gone with managing my own property (learned a lot-- marketing for tenant, screening a tenant, and collecting rent) and my tenants have been open market which I believe has worked out well. I just think there is something to be said for having a guaranteed check every month. Two more questions I had were how do you guys with rentals handle repairs outside of a new roof or A/C ( I have heard some people make the tenant cover everything under $50, some split all repairs that were caused by the tenant etc.) and what is the most important part of your screening purpose ( income, general feel of the person, past history) Thanks again

If you were just starting out in real estate at this time and wanted to buy houses for the purpose of buy and rent out for the long term. Would you go with section 8 tenants or open market given that in my market there is a monster demand for single family rentals and they are literally beating down your door. Another question would you manage them yourself or sacrifice 10% of your rent on letting a property management firm take care of the process. Thanks for all the suggestions

Hey Raymond

I think blogging is definitely a good thing to do if you have the time while building your business. It gives you a web presence and it will only continue to become more popular with the way technology is changing the business. I think when you are starting your blog you need to define what niche your blog is going to be focused on. One thing I think is important is to make your blog fun to read. There are too many boring blogs out there and remember building your blog is a process that does not happen overnight. You have gotta have your social media working hard for you and really network online to start to create a presence
Hope this helps

Thanks Charles
I think your right there is always opportunity. I think there is no doubt that we are purchasing properties at a steep discount from what they were a couple of years ago. Who knows how low prices will go, but for rentasl if you can buy them low the cashflow will be there. I was just curious what kind of cap rates you go for in your market and what kind of timeframe people try to hold on to rentals if there still cashflowing
Thanks