All Forum Posts by: Peter Dascoulias II

Welcome Sarah......BP is the place to be!

Make sure nobody copied your listing and is using it as a SCAM on Craigslist.  This happened to me!  I couldn't figure out why my rental wasn't being snatched up and found my place listed for $200 less on Craigslist.  In a small town (65,000) people see that or get scammed by it and it spreads like wild fire.    

It's hard to say if you should leave it vacant or not.  I know we didn't even have the choices you do when we fell into the landlord game (it's nice to have options). 

We became accidental landlords when we had a 4/3 built in Central Florida on a nice corner lot for $170,000 in 2005. We had that same house appraise for $262,000 about a year later, but when it was time to sell in 2011 a realtor guaranteed they could get us close to $110,000 for it. We became Landlords and fell in love with the investing side of it.  We were fortunate enough to get some good renters in there and they have actually remained there for the last 6 years. 

 If you can find good tenants it could be well worth renting out until the market changes.  By the time our tenants next lease is up our house should go on the market for about $195,000.  We haven't raised their rent once since they moved in because the market keeps going up about 8% a year.  They are still paying the mortgage and we aren't loosing money.  The principal balance is going down and the property is appreciating back to where it should be.  Now if we had put horrible renters in there we might have not been so lucky.  Hope this helps.....but you are the one that has to roll the dice.

Welcome!  You are definitely in the right place.  My wife and I had Three rentals when we joined BiggerPockets and now we have nine.  I get so motivated listening to the podcast and reading the forums, its caused me to continue the mission of acquiring rentals.  I'm like your husband, I like the math & spreadsheets.  My wife was managing the properties as a stay at home mom but has now acquired her Realtors license and is killing it on that front.  Keep up the good work, it will be worth it in the long run.

I use the My Mortgage App all the time.  I store my mortgages and loans in it and also refer to it as a mortgage calculator for deals.   

I'm sure you've already read this information, but just in case you haven't it gives good insight on second tier VA loans. Just watch the funding fees (they are usually a "gotcha") when you do your calculations! https://www.veteransunited.com/valoans/second-tier-entitlement/

BP is very motivational; the more you read the more exciting the possibilities become!  Welcome!

Unfortunately, I'm in Salt Lake until Friday so I'm out for this meeting.  

I ask them how they justify not getting into Real Estate investing (It's always the same tenant horror stories).   I fall back on the IDEAL acronym from one of the podcasts.

I.  Income/Cash flow

D. Depreciation (27.5)

E. Equity

A. Appreciation (4.3 average over history)

L. Leverage

How do you argue with that!

I had some folks do the same thing and I gave them their legal options per the lease. 

1.  Buy the Lease out.

2.  Find a suitable tenant (that we approve of) to take over the lease.

3.  Allow us to find a suitable tenant and pay until the other tenants move in, so that there is no financial burden to us. 

They ended up selecting option "1" to our amazement!