All Forum Posts by: Michael Patterson

My wife is a Realtor, investor, and enjoys working with fellow investors. She also runs the Southwest Oklahoma Real Estate Investors Association here. PM if you like, I'll get you her info. 

@Victor S. I had one built. There was a perfect pocket between the hvac cabinet and laundry, that I had framed and sheet rocked to make it a continuous wall. I had a set of bifold closet doors from another project. Cheap and easy closet. There was a clearance issue with the attic ladder, so a cutout was left in the sheet rock at the top.

Jeff B. is right about the legal part. That aside, I have a house in Lawton that was the exact same situation. I went ahead and installed a window and closet according to current city code. I also blew insulation over that conversion where there was very little. The house is now a 4 bedroom house with a huge 4th bedroom. I haven't had any problem renting it without a garage, and the tenants have all used that as the master bedroom, even though it has no bathroom. 4 bedroom houses are hard to come by here.

I live in Lawton and own 3 SFHs here. We are in the process of buying a house about 25 miles outside of town and will turn our personal residence into rental #4. Lawton is unique in that you can have $500k homes a block away from $20k homes. A few blocks one way or the other can really hurt your rental values. We picked all three of ours up as REOs and of the three, one is in what I would call a rough neighborhood. But it's in a pocket on the edge, and we've had good luck with it so far. There is definitely money to be made here, but you really have to do your due diligence, and make sure the property will perform. I have a few friends that retired here from California, and they started investing long distance well before relocating here. They have other investor friends that they assist in finding and acquiring properties here. We also have a few investor minded realtors here. PM me if you want contact info.

@Adam Hershman @Rhett Tullis

I copied the quoted text below directly from the engrossed bill that was sent to the house dated 3/4/15. My leagaleze is a bit rusty, but the way I read it there is an exemption of property owners whose tenants incur an unpaid bill.

Emphasis added.

"Upon a finding of delinquency of the account consistent with the policies adopted by the public entity regarding nonpayment, cost of the service and expenses, the clerk of the public entity may file a notice of lien with the county clerk of the county in which the property is located describing the property, cost of the service provided and expenses incurred by the municipality, excluding late charges, penalties, and interest, and stating that the public entity claims a lien on the property for this service; provided, that a lien shall not be filed against property in which the delinquent account is owed by a tenant or lessee and not by the property owner; "

@Robert Montanaro I have been using the My Smart Move service on here. It's in the resources tab under tenant screening. It's run by Trans Union. You set up an account as landlord. Start an application and it emails the tenant. They enter all their info and you get the report. You also have the option to pay the fee or have the tenant pay the fee when they log on. I have been paying it and collecting the application fee from the tenant as some tenants won't have credit/debit cards. 

There are other similar services that others use, but I have liked this one so far. The criminal check they do is limited as I have found things like traffic tickets and small claims cases in our state court system that didn't show on there.

Some states (like OK) have a searchable data base. This is what I found while trying to research a tenant from NY NY State Unified Court System.

God luck

My county shows 1 star for accuracy. That's about par considering what I have seen during analysis and my own properties' "zestimates". One of mine was recently showing about 150% of it's true value, then the zestimate dropped by $20,000 in one day as the correction was applied, overshooting the value negatively. Thank goodness mine are rentals and I don't have to attempt to explain that to a buyer.

Thanks for all the replies. After a reminder via text message the rent was deposited this morning. 

I also learned more today about late fees. I was invited to accompany a friend to eviction court today to see how the process works here. It was pretty cut and dry, but the judge made a point to say that according to OK case law a late fee cannot exceed 5% of the monthly rental amount (The OK landlord tenant law does not specify % or amount). I have heard that judges here (there are only 2) will throw out any fees they deem "excessive" including and especially daily fees.

I will be adjusting the wording in my future leases to be more in line with this interpretation.

My lease currently reads 

"Tenant agrees to pay the rent in advance of the first day of each month to ME to be deposited in our local Bank Account#00000000 or at such other place as management may designate. By paying the rent on time the Tenant will receive a discount of $_50_. In the event the rent is not received by the fifth of the month the discount is no longer applied."

I have a tenant that is paying on the 4th usually, which is no issue. Today is the fourth and no deposit. When I text-ed them to ask about it they said it would be in tomorrow the 5th. How do you interpret the wording above? 

A. The rent is due by COB on the 4th. The rent is late ON the 5th.

B. The rent is not late if received ON the 5th, but is late on the 6th.

This is the first time they have paid on the 5th, but have only been in the house 4 months. I don't plan on charging the $50 this time either way, but wonder whether I should bring it up as a reminder. In future leases I am going to reword that statement to be more clear.

Thanks for all the kind words.

@Richard W. No. This was my first time leasing property. My wife did work part time for our Realtor in her property management business, and I have some local investor friends who have helped my learning curve greatly. The on post housing has affected some parts of the rental market, but I'm unsure as to how much. I think most of the new housing is for Senior NCOs and Field grade Officers. I had multiple potential tenants from E5 and below, and one of my properties is leased to military.