All Forum Posts by: Shawn McCormick

@Wayne Woodson You have gotten pretty great responses here. I will add that if you are able to travel to view the property before getting it under contract or during your inspection period, take tons of photos and video...measure everything and meet with your agent and have them help you. Much can be done remotely, but no one will do it to your standards. 

In my market, Orlando, our STR homes come fully furnished and ready to rent the day after closing and also future bookings almost always convey with the property. So this can be a challenge to even put lipstick on your rental since it is booked when you take over. I advise my clients to block some time off the calendar during a traditionally slow time and pre-book all your work to be done during that time. Pre order all of your furniture, theming items etc and store them so that when the time comes, you are ready to knock out any updates and not interrupt any guest experience. I would even suggest incentivizing the first few guests after your redo to give you great reviews.

Hope this helps and good luck!

 @Frank Zhao, did you not have a real estate agent help you with the purchase? They should be your number one resource for just about everything you will need and it sounds like you've already closed on the home, so you are even further behind. Reach out to @Jay Breitlow, he manages properties for several of my clients and he has been fantastic with them. 

@Trent Paulk are there specific areas of Orlando you are looking in to? Orange County as a whole does not allow it, that is why all of the surrounding counties do well. For Disney area rentals, Osceoloa has the most STR communities, then come Polk and Lake....many of which are designed specifically as vacation/resort communities. If you are looking outside of the Disney area, be more diligent on your research, Seminole, Volusia, Brevard will all have different rules and even those will change from area to area (like some towns only allow STR in 1 bedroom condo units, not 2 or 3 bedroom, crazy stuff like that.)

Of course that is just from the county level, you then will have to make sure the HOA allows it. A very basic way to help determine it would be to find the home/neighborhood you are interested in..go to map view and then satellite. If every home in the community has a pool, you are cool, if only a few do than you probably won't make any money there anyhow, even if the HOA allows it.

Hope this helps a bit.

@Hilary Stalder if you are near the UCF or Valencia campuses, it is very common for a home to be rented out by the room and have each person's parent be on the lease and if any of the kids break the lease, drops out etc...the other parents are on the hook. This should almost be expected that the parents will know and accept those terms and if they don't, there will be plenty lined up behind them.s

The local REIA (CFRI..net) has meet-up groups that will cover these types of things for you and they actually just had a landlord workshop this weekend.

 @James Roux I live in Clermont. One of my go to agents if you are having issues is Colleen Pacheco with Secured Insurance locally. 407-407-725-3413

@Jordan Thompson The numbers can/will vary greatly based on community, size of the home, theming, and number of beds. I have a basic breakdown by the community of what to expect by size of home that I can share. However, you are running a small business and your ROI will be different depending on how you operate it, the reviews you get, how you manage etc.

DSCR loans are usually 15 or 20% depending on loan amount. The rates I've been quoted very recently are over 7%.

@Dave Tov I have a couple of good contacts for you for STR loans from Foreign Nationals.

Hi @Kevin Lee. I grew in Toledo and currently invest there, but live in Orlando now for about 20 years. The reason I'm investing in Toledo is because I know the area, have some friends and family there to help if needed and the cost of entry is minimal. 

You say you are looking in Orlando. To be honest, our market doesn't have much multi family and what we do have is generally overpriced junk! You have to go to other smaller markets in Florida to have a better selection, but pricing is still considerably higher than Detroit and your tenant pool will be smaller. If you don't have boots on the ground here and know the market, it may be an uphill battle. Hope this helps.

Good luck!

There are opportunities to make this work for all, but all have to be on board. I would try to get a face to face with the beneficiary and the brother and find out what his 'needs' are. What he wants and what he needs could be very different. Once you let him know he has options of getting monthly payments instead of getting a lump sum may suit him better or maybe getting a healthy down and then smaller payments so he will have income for the next 10-20 years. Seller financing can be very attractive to people that may have limited income (assuming he is older). 

Maybe you offer to pay for probate in return for an option on the house (risky sometimes, but still often cheaper than waiting a few years to save up more money for your down payment). I believe you may even be able to do a remainderman deed. Just explore options and if you don't think you can pull this off yourself, try to get in under contract and then you will open up more options down the road like wholesaling it or bringing in a partner once you have something worth pursuing. 

Best of luck!

@Brian Perez, I see you are in Orlando. I would definitely look into joing the local chapter of the National REIA (CFRI=Central Florida Realty Investors). There are almost two dozens meetings a month on all things RE investing with sub groups on specific niches and then some members even have their own meet ups. You will be able to even find mentors there if you want. The Monthly general meeting is coming up soon.

What are you looking to do? Flip, buy and hold, tax deeds, notes, private lender....?