All Forum Posts by: Tyler Lyons

Thank you, @Jabari Long!

Thank you for the recommendation - I will give them a look!

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking for a bookkeeper to assist with the accounting duties for my rental portfolio and I wanted to see if anyone had any good referrals they'd be willing to share. I'll be checking in with my tax preparer to see what his pricing looks like, but I'm guessing going through my CPA may be a bit on the pricey side. Does anyone have referrals they'd be willing to share of folks who do a quality job, but that have reasonably priced fees? I'd be grateful for any recommendations. 

Thanks!

Tyler

Hi @Jonathan Thrasher - that's really disappointing and I'm sorry to hear that. My experience with CU ended up being "mixed", at best. The project was supposed to take 4 months and ended up taking about 11 months. Also, I really had to wrangle with him at the very end to button everything up and fix some work they did that looked really poor. It was definitely a challenge to get him to do what he needed to do, but ultimately, the project finally got finished. I've done a handful of rehabs since that project and I've not asked him back to help on any of those.

Believe it or not, I actually had a worse experience with a contractor on one of my very next projects! At the end of the day, finding quality contractors really is one of the more difficult things to do when you are first starting out because there are not a ton of good ones out there and for the ones who are good, investors sometimes tend not to sare them if they can keep them busy. I really hope that your luck with contractors has improved since then!

Hi @Ben Durwood,

I agree with @Tim VandenToorn that there are a lot of factors to be considered in determining whether some of these costs can or should be passed on to your tenants. Also, I think you are smart to challenge your property management company on this.

I have a duplex in town and for that property, the water isn't separately metered and additionally, I also cover the cost of snow removal and for mowing the lawn, because there really isn't a good way to split those amounts. 

However, I also have a single family home in which it's built into the leasing agreement that the tenant is to cover the cost of water. The PM company that I use pays for the water to make sure it's covered, then I see a credit come through after the tenant reimburses me for the cost of the water. The fact that the tenant is covering the cost of water didn't seem to have an impact on the rent that I was able to get either as my rent for this property is solidly toward the top of the market. 

It's definitely a smart move that you are scrutinizing and challenging your operating expenses. Also, if your management company isn't willing to think outside of the box a bit with you on this one, it might be a red flag. 

Hi @Anita Ortiz - congratulations on your first residential assisted living facility! That is really exciting. I met Gene at the Real Estate Guys syndication conference last year and it definitely piqued my interest in residential assisted living. 

One thing that has been holding me back from pursuing residential assisted living further is that my perception is that they tend to be pretty management intensive, much more so than standard rental real estate managed by a property management company. As someone with a really busy day job, I feel like that is something I'd need to get my arms around in determining if this type of investment would be right for me. Is my perception there accurate? Or are there ways you can scale it to easily leverage your time?

How much time would you say that you invest from week to week on your first facility and have you been able to find good caretakers and a good administrator to help you leverage your time? I would be grateful for any insight you would be willing to share. 

Thank you and congrats again! : )

Hi @Shawn Breyer - so far so good! I'm only a few months in of having them manage my properties, so the sample size is small, but I like what I've seen so far. They seem to do a really good job of marketing the properties. They get professional photos taken of your property that look awesome. The properties they manage really stick out because of these photos if you are ever scrolling through what is available for rent in the market. Also, they got my properties leased up quickly and at a level of rent that I felt was very good. I have an SFR on the NW side of town that they took a deposit on literally about 3 days after we listed it. I think part of this is market dynamics as the market in GR is so hot right now, but I definitely need to give credit to United as well because they were really on the ball.

I can't think of anything so far that has been noticeably deficient, but I'm sure I'll be getting more familiar with them as a management company as I get a better feel for what they are like after they get the properties leased up and they're actually managing it for me. Like I said - my sample size for this aspect of them as a management company is still really small. But, I do think they are definitely worth consideration as you interview management companies in evaluating which one to go with. Feel free to drop me a note if you have any specific questions - hope this helps!

Great looking project @Jen R.! Really nice that you were able to pull almost all of your investment capital out of the project and still have a unit to provide you with over $200 / month in cash flow.

Were you able to get a cash out refinance at appraised value after only 3-4 months? I talked to several banks around me (West Michigan/Grand Rapids area) and even the small ones seem to have a one year seasoning requirement before they allow doing a refinance at appraised value. Could you share some more info on what your refinance looked like and how you were able to get appraised value so early on in your ownership of the property?

Hi @Nick Watkins,

I was just recently calling around to banks asking this same question! In one of the more recent BP podcasts (ep 237 with Ian Reeves), he talked about doing just what you're looking to do; buying a property and fixing it up quickly and refinancing it out at appraised value within a relatively short window and not waiting the whole year. If you could access some of that equity you created quicker, rather than waiting a year, then you could scale your portfolio much faster. This guy put together a portfolio of like 60-70 doors in only a couple of years doing this. 

I talked to three different banks and all three said that they could do only loan to cost and that they wouldn't be able to do a loan at appraised value until a year has passed. The guy I use for my commercial loans works at small, local credit union and he's able to draw up some creative loans and even he said that his bank won't allow him to do this. 

Like @Tim VandenToorn, I'm putting them on a commercial loan for now. In the future, once a year has passed, I'll probably look at refinancing into a 30-year fixed rate loan for some of the properties and pulling out some cash. 

Sorry that this wasn't more helpful, but just wanted to let you know that I've ran into the same thing and I'm not sure if there is a good way around it.

Hi @Jackie Runals,

Definitely check out the West Michigan REI Club if you have the chance. A pretty large group of investors gets together every first or second Monday of the month at BW3 in Wyoming and I'm confident you could benefit from it.

I'm focused a bit more on buy and hold and not so much the wholesaling side, so unfortunately I don't have too much to share with you on the strategies or the mechanics of wholesaling, but I know for a fact there are several active wholesalers that go to this event that you could connect with. 

https://www.meetup.com/WestMichiganREIClub/

Feel free to drop me a line if I can help in any way.

Tyler