All Forum Posts by: Jim Stardust

The 3-day notice is for pay or quit, it shouldn't include anything about the late fee charges. Now, assuming the tenant wants to stay and pay, you'll ask them to include the late fee in the payment. If they don't send it, they're in violation of the lease agreement.

Take a deep breath and relax, you sound like you're hyperventilating, and it's only been a week... ;-)

I agree with Jon, trust your PM as she seems to know what she's doing. She's trying to attract good quality tenants, those who care about kids education and more likely stick around for few years. Now, your friend may be renting her place fast but she might have high turnover and other issues, you'll likely have less problems in the long run! You just need to learn to be patient and trust the professional PM here. I tend to agree with her about rent signs especially if it's a quality neighborhood.

As far as the rent rate, what are the comparable SFHs going for around your area? I assume she should know best but you'll know if the rent is too high once you post it on Craigslist, the feedback will be almost immediate. Good luck, it's okay to be nervous about your first rental, just take it in stride, it should be a great learning experience for you starting out.

Don't accept anything from them, some people can easily produce fake tax returns. I had a tenant once say he's a professional poker player, plays poker on the internet and gets paid from an offshore account, but he said he doesn't include much of that income when he files his taxes, he wanted me to trust him he could make the rent...

I now request the annual 1099 (equivalent to W-2), certified copy of IRS-1040, and letter from accountant (preferably CPA) which should state nature of business and income holdings, annual income expected for current year, amount of annual personal income applicant takes from business, and bank references, credit report, etc.

I notice a lot of you have a truck, I often wondered how useful a truck would be in this business but I can't justify the gas guzzling aspect, how useful is a truck for you who own one?

I thought HUD homes are bought through a bidding process, so won't you have to bid a higher amount than list? Most HUD properties that I saw in my area moving after they were listed sold for 20-40% above the listing price.

http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/06072011_housing_rentals.asp

$200K if you achieve the 20% COC ROI and then you still have to pay your investors and hard money lenders from that amount as well, or is that 20% after all the costs and expenses?

It seems to me that to make a decent living from flipping and at the rate of doing 2-4 flips a year, one will have to operate with $1 million of assets, at least, am I wrong?

The question I have to all flippers, those experienced and newbies, what sets you apart from everyone else? There's a lot money floating around, and everyone and their brother can hire a contractor and buy cheap flooring/windows/appliances. What do you bring to the table that will make you earn that hypothetical $20K or whatever that amount might be? You might think you're special and you might be since you're here, but I recall when every cousin and friend wanted to flip houses back in 2005-2006, most ended up in the red. What I saw was people overestimating their ARV, underestimate their fixed and rehab costs, and were completely not cognizant of the human toll those projects took on their physical and mental beings.

So why does one lawyer earn 3x more than the average lawyer, why can a surgeon earn multiple times what other surgeons do, how does one value their talent and their experience? Why is certain a singer or a writer earning millions while others can barely scrap by?

The answer to how to determine your "flip profit" is not something you can do on paper, what kind of talent do you have, what kind of creative thinking do you bring that will make your flip completely stand out compared to every other flip? Sometimes simple cheap touches can make a huge difference than someone spending thousands on new floors or shiny appliances, do you think you have that knack? Everyone should be able to make some minimum profit by investing some time and sweat, but what's going to set you apart in the future is whether you have the right abilities and talent to spot a property, evaluate it properly, make the right decisions rehabbing it, and have the appropriate expectations selling it.

The signs for "we buy ugly houses" and "we buy short sales" are popping up again everywhere around the Cincinnati Ohio area. They virtually disappeared for a couple of years, there's a lot of cash, money is cheap and good deals are not as frequent as banks are controlling (managing) their inventories to massage their books over several quarters...

Peter, send me an email address and I can download the file and send it to you. It's best if you can use a proxy server, there are all kinds of good information to browse through...