All Forum Posts by: Matt Moreland

In my opinion, AI will take over most of the time-consuming tasks that are required of professionals in most career fields, leaving the more human-facing aspects to the people to handle. Face-to-face interactions, negotiations, soft skills, etc.

@Billy Knox, hey Billy! I'm an agent here in Lubbock but also own and operate AirBnBs. I do airbnbs more personally than on the client-facing side but am always down to talk STRs and what has/has not worked for us here. Compared to the numbers stated above, we average between $110-160/night at ours and are typically booked up 70-80% of the time unless we have extended stay bookings placed in advance.

There are still lots of travelling healthcare providers coming to work for 2, 3 , or 4 months at a time that are willing to pay a premium for convenience, luxury, and location and the STR market here has stayed fairly strong here for that reason. Unless it's families or friends visiting Tech students or coming for Tech events, most guests seem to want to be in a neighborhood that they would want to live in themselves, so I am observing a shift from the party houses to more of the quieter/nicer neighborhoods where a family or group of coworkers could stay just the same and have an exceptional experience.

Better off putting down a huge security deposit than putting it into a savings account these days LOL.

These are always tough situations. The one bachelorette party group that stayed at our place threw up in one of the toilets, shoved a scarf down it, and flooded the master bath/bedroom and left early instead of notifying us that something was wrong. 

Needless to say drywall had to be replaced and water remediation experts had to come into the property that was less than a year old at the time.

Hard to say what I would do if I got another request from a bachelor/bachelorette group again today, I think that first experience has me slightly jaded LOL

Very nice!! Love that real estate investing was able to provide you with the perfect space for your business and then hopefully soon the ability to lever up utilizing the value you created to continue investing. Great stuff!

We've got some rentals in Midland/Odessa and lots of family from my dad's side that live in both cities, including my brother @Mason Moreland who lives in Midland with his family. @Hunter Hall is another friend and investor in Midland who has lots of experience with the real estate market there as an investor. 

They were at one point in time more distinct markets than they are now, but as both cities have grown they have (in my opinion as an outsider) become more of one large market with each having slightly different clientele in each. For example, you're going to see a lot more man camps leased by oil & gas companies in Odessa where they house multiple oilfield workers simultaneously, and lots of young oilfield workers leasing up houses and apartments. In Midland, you'll see a lot of folks working in both Midland and Odessa who aren't necessarily working directly in the oilfields. I.e. lots of folks working at the offices of Oxy, Pioneer, EOG, Shell, Frost Bank, etc. Midland seems to be where people coming from other cities in Texas tend to locate themselves. Mason and Hunter can surely correct me on this if I'm off the mark. 

We've got four units in Midland off of Midland Dr. and have had residents of both the oil & gas and unrelated industries. When the market is booming, rents are way up and payments are never missed. Having O&G tenants is great in those times. When the market is way down, that's when it's advantageous to have bought at the right time when numbers work regardless of what oil prices are doing. We've had teachers, QSR workers, retail workers, tutors, etc. residing at our property that have been able to afford rent regardless of market conditions. Regardless of the fact that Midland and Odessa are heavily O&G focused, I think buying a deal that has good fundamentals is more often than not a good move.

TRUTH!! LOL. So easy to find yourself fixing dishwashers and sitting on a lawnmower instead of a beach or boat like you imagined starting out! 

Unfortunately I've never seen anyone have much luck getting owed rent back from evicted tenants. Not even for a couple months, let alone three years. Unfortunately New York can be pretty hard to work with for landlords from investors I've spoken to up there, so I'm sure that you've been doing what you could to try and resolve the situation as peacefully as possible.

If she has been a holdover tenant this long and the state has been preventing you from evicting her due to any number of reasons (lockdown, mental health, employment, etc.) is that something that the state could offset with some of the funds that would have/should have gone towards your rent that was not paid to you? Not an attorney and not super familiar with tenant/landlord laws up there but $30k is a painful blow to take after three years of trying to resolve that situation.

Best of luck and keep us updated, hoping that this has a good resolution to it.

@Jon Simmons Not legal advice, but my wife and I had to do the same thing and we just went to the title company I closed the house at and they were able to take care of everything for us (here in Texas). 

Been a few years so I don't remember how long it took, but it was relatively hassle-free and inexpensive. 

Best of luck on the 1031!!

-Matt

Alex, I think it really depends on the market. In our specific market we see a lot of FSBOs that we'll try and tour with our clients only to find out you have to send a refundable deposit to a Paypal account before they'll give you the keys and other silly nonsense like that. Pretty obviously scams. 

I have had several of my listings' media harvested for use by scammers and it is unfortunate. They almost always pop up as FSBOs or FRBOs listed far below actual market value, and they simply seek to get whatever money they can out of consumers before the listing gets taken down. Most FSBO/FRBO listings that have been up for a long time are real (which is a whole other discussion: many don't remove the listing when it's no longer available, and many overprice to the point that it will not move bc they are not objective about their property's value).

That being said, there are plenty of legitimate FSBO sellers who are successful in their pursuits of selling their homes. There's nothing wrong with selling a property yourself, it ultimately comes down to what level of risk is acceptable to you and what the value of that risk is. As has been mentioned above, Realtors have E&O insurance and also take on some liability when they handle the transaction for you -- that, and they are (or, should be) trained professionals who do this so frequently that they don't overlook the small items that many FSBO sellers do.

Again, if you decide to go the FSBO route I would simply suggest finding ways to differentiate yourself from the other FSBO listings. Offer commission to buyer's agents in the listing description -- being willing to work with a buyer's agent will make your FSBO experience night and day compared to the many hostile sellers out there. More often than not, a conversation over phone to try and schedule a showing for my buyers on a FSBO is ended with profanity when they hear "for my client", or simply unanswered over text. This of course is reversed 6 months later when the property hasn't sold, but by that point the interested buyers have been living in another home they bought for 5 months.

Be open and agreeable to work well with others -- cover your bases and use an attorney to review docs -- there are countless resources online and if you have the time, energy, and capacity to sell your own property then you can absolutely do it.

Best of luck,
Matt