All Forum Posts by: Lucas Miles

@Ian Dyer Reach out a couple larger property management companies in your area, and ask who they use for flooring. This is how we found the largest commercial supplier of flooring in our area who gets the best product for better pricing as their volume is higher.  

@Katherine Earle Updating the exterior lighting of an apartment is a big win for the tenants, makes them feel much safer going in and out of the buildings at night. Depending on what is already is installed you might be able to just update to a newer LED Wall Pack exterior light, these are very bright, and very reasonable (<$1000 per light depending on what you all get). Reach out to some local electricians, they should be able to point you in the right direction. If you aren't able to just to swap in new lights that is where it might start to get more expensive.  

@Joe C. I would eat this cost, much cheaper and a lot less headache than having a vacancy!

@Sean Relyea switch to a professional property management software system, Buildium, AppFolio, etc. These have ACH collection systems build in along with numerous other benefits to make your life easier. 

@George Red I think its important to sit down and figure out which items you will do in the future. If your doing all the work and still contributing half of the downpayment money, maybe you would be better off finding a partner who can provide all the downpayment money but does 0% of the work, still split 50/50 or so.

If you continue with your current partner sit down and list out all the items and who is responsible for what items (finding deal, underwriting, downpayment $, financing, setting up everything, managing the rehab, self-managing or managing the PM, etc). Figure out who will do what, then can dive into what the split would be. 

@Joe Stout if you have an LLC and that LLC owns this business then yes your income/expenses should "run through your LLC".

From an asset protection standpoint the purpose of an LLC is to separate your business from you personally. If your business gets sued, they can't go after you personally. If you personally get sued they can't go after your business. If you are not correctly running your books through your business a good attorney could "pierce the corporate veil" removing this separation from yourself and your business.

From a tax perspective, unless you have an S or C corp, your LLC is a disregarded entity, therefore its taxes get passed to your personally. If you were denied because you don't have 2 years rental history, is seems it would only help meet this 2 year rental history if you would have been running through your LLC (not to mention the other reasons I discussed) - Disclaimer - Not a CPA or attorney.

@Shua Rosen I have not done any formal education or mentoring programs personally, but I believe experience/networking is the best way to get started. Search for some local meet ups in your area and start connecting with people. Listen to podcasts, read real estate books, etc are much more inexpensive ways to start acquiring knowledge. I think a Jake and Gino or similar mentorship program is much more valuable then a MS program. 

@Jessica Kirkpatrick we rent to a lot of immigrants coming to the US to work, and are in a similar position as you, nothing will come back for a credit/background check. In our situation these immigrants are primarily agriculture workers coming to work on local farms. We have had great success renting to these tenants overall. For us they are on work VISA sponsored by the local farms, the farms spend a lot of money getting them to come work, and therefore do a lot of the vetting to get quality workers. Hope this helps, 

@Allen M Miller really depends on your market, and what your plans are for the property. Is this a fix and flip or rental? If fix and flip you can look at comparable sales on a 2/3 vs a 3/3. If rental, look at what the rental rates would be on a 2/3 vs 3/3. 

@Sarah Msuya "Lender said its required to have 10% of seller funds in the deal" - Not following this. Lenders will loan 80% (or 75%) of the purchase price (assuming appraisal comes back higher than purchase price). So you will have to bring the remaining 20% in "cash" to the closing table. This 20% could come from your money, bringing in a partner, a hard money lender, or even the seller (seller carry). Easy numbers, your buying a property for 100k, bank gives you 80k, seller holds a 20k seller carry, your into the property for "no money" (other than some small closing/title fees). So instead of seller walking away with 100k at closing, seller will only get a check for 80k. So now you will have a monthly mortgage payment to 1. The bank for the 80k and 2. The seller for the 20k. Typically a seller carry will only be for a few years, and often interest only payments. By doing this your assuming you will be able to come up with the remaining 20k to pay off the seller in a few year, or the property will be worth more and you will be able to refinance and pay off the seller the 20k.