All Forum Posts by: Michael Montana

I personally haven't seen any good Property Management in the area. I think if you are out of state it's best to try and find someone you can trust and have them do it over a big company.

Hi Omer. We are familiar with the Birmingham area. If you ever have questions about a specific area, let us know.

I'm fairly new to all this but with two rentals...I don't really believe in a flat % anymore for the different categories. %'s can give you a general number; however, I like to work backwards. For example, I plan for one month vacancy a year. I take my expenses for one month and divide that by 12. I will save that much each month and it will be set aside for vacancy. Same thing for Cap Ex and Maintenance. You should have a general idea of which CapEx items are coming up...so if you know you need a new HVAC in 2 years. Divide that expense over 2 years...set it aside for HVAC.

But to answer your question, yes. I do believe it is a part of doing business. 

I'm curious to how you all balance living in the now versus investing for the future. We currently own two investment properties and are debt free (minus our personal home). We currently save over 50% of our income. Obviously these answers will vary based on everyones different goals...but just curious to what you guys are doing. Are you buying things for enjoyment or just grinding/saving/investing? We are really wanting to purchase a "toy" like a boat to enjoy with the family and let the cash flow from the two properties pay for it. 

@Kyle J.

Just thinking out loud....what if they tried to pay in full and you had blocked them?

@Ravi Kumar

I gotcha. I wanted to like it and use it...it’s so easy for simple transactions and most people are very familiar with it.

One negative with Venmo is that if you are in an eviction process...they can send partial payments which muddies the water and makes process more difficult.

@Ravi Kumar I’m confused then...you recommended it before you researched it?

Backstory: We purchased our primary residence 3 years ago and now have about 100k in equity thanks to the current real estate market. And with the low interest rates, we are going to refinance our house. We currently have one long term rental property, and we have enough in savings to do one BRRRR.

I'm interested in hearing what you would choose when faced with the following two options:

1. Refinance our home and take cash out to buy an additional rental property. Because of the cash out part, the interest rate is 3.375% and would save us about $100 on our current mortgage payment. This would require a $500 appraisal. 

2. Refinance our home and don't take cash out, giving us a 2.99% interest rate and lowering our mortgage payment by $400. 

There are pros and cons to both, so we're curious what other real estate investors would do. 

Thanks!

 Are you not supposed to have a business account with Venmo to use them for rent?

@Bobby Balentine I personally would want to lock them down into a longer lease to prevent vacancy.