All Forum Posts by: Michael King

Get a realtor that wants your business. I've had some bad luck with realtors. It seems no one wants commission on the $200K houses that I buy; they just can't be a$$ed to be available to show me potential properties. In my market houses sell quickly, so I've missed a lot of properties because the realtor was a day or 2 late.

No good deed ever goes unpunished.

Sorry this happened for your friend.

@Steve Chan Very unlikely an STR arbitrage type is going to go for your property, given the current COVID climate. Best use would be a 1 year lease and try again for STR then. Or wait it out to do it when the coast is clear of COVID, but then how many months of lost rent?

Another possibility is to let a property manager take care of it. They'll take a 10% stake or less. 

I like Grant. I don't know him, have no skin in it, but what value he's given me is drive and motivation simply through watching one of his interviews on BP's youtube channel, and listening to the other. The end result is I had my first MF under contract about 4 weeks after listening to him. I have respect for the guy.

I wouldn't worry about litigation. From what I've been seeing on the forum, some suggest getting an LLC to put it in to protect you from litigation (well it would only protect your other assets that are not in the same LLC, and so long as you keep everything separate and don't pierce the corporate veil). Others say simply getting a sufficient umbrella insurance policy is enough to protect your assets.

And then if you do work to the title, you better make sure you get written permission from the lender first. 

In all practicality you don't need to change the title to rent it out. When you hire a property manager they don't need to be on the title. Without knowing your background, I would suggest using a property manager first so you can lower yourself into the arena, rather than dive off the cliff.

Good luck!

This is one of the reasons why I fired my last PM company. 

I delete and block text messages from random numbers. I hate any spam. I wish I could turn off apple's notifications on my iphone. 

I only hand write marketing letters, and only respond to hand written marketing letters (so none). 

 Just my input here. All of my properties are 45 minutes drive. I personally don't like them that far, and would hesitate if an hour away. This is for self management. I feel as though getting to that 90 minute each way drive would be difficult, especially if the property needed a lot of work. It all depends on your level of tolerance for the drive. 

I downloaded the forms for the SBA and looked at them and read some info on the loans, and monitored the progress of applicants here on BP. I don't have any employees so I don't think I'll qualify for even $1000 of the EIDL, nor the PPP. At this (early) stage, I'm seeing disappointment for those like me that have no employees. 

Seeing the writing on the wall, I decided to log on to my employer's website and change the number of dependents for federal withholding. I'm fortunate in that I can do this as many times I like. I cranked the dependents up to 100 and that means I had no federal withholding taken out of my pay - which, based on previous paychecks, was $1000 that I get to 'keep'. 

I've decided that rather than apply for a 3.5% loan with the govt that I probably won't get, I'm just going to continue this withholding for a couple of paychecks (I don't really need to - yet - but was just experimenting with it really). I know this money is going to be repayable come April 2021, but hey so long as I pay it back in one go, it's interest free. Also kind of dependent on how much magic my CPA can weave. 

Anyway, I'm just posting this for information. If you have a W2 and you can adjust your fed withholding, maybe it's another possibility to help you make your ends meet in the short term.

Good luck.