All Forum Posts by: Michael Zagorsky

We have had family in the past that has owned some condo rental properties in Fort Walton.  It was more of a part time residence and slight appreciation play, but the cash flow was bad.  

My wife and I do love visiting the panhandle and have always mused about buying one but every time I pencil out the number, the results suck.  

From what I can tell there are a ton of negatives to owning a beach front short term rental:

1.  Everything rusts and the HVAC has a very short lifespan along with a lot of maintenance for the structure due to salt water.

2.  Insurance is bad.

3. HOA fees are high

4.  The sand really shortens the life of the property furnishing and requires more frequent replacements.

5.  Hurricane damage can leave long vacancy periods.

6.  Occupancy is low in winter season

7.  Professional management that is often charging 20%.  

All that to say, I have rented plenty of vacation rentals so clearly there are investors renting these things out and I assume they are not dumb doing it.  But whenever I try and pencil out one as an investment all I see is big time negative cash flow and maintenance that eats away at any appreciation.  So what am I not seeing in my numbers telling me to stay away?

Looking for advice:

We have a rental house in Alabama.  Wife used to own it as her primary residence before we moved away and turned it into a rental.  We use a rental management company in Birmingham to manage our property.

Long story short.  We have an issue with water around the front door.  It has caused major rot and we already had to replace joists under the flooring a few years ago and the issue is reoccurring.  We inspected the home in July and the tenant showed us the hole in the floor by the front door. Bottom line, we have a water intrusion issue that is causing some major wood damage to the front of the house.  

We've spent about $1k with our existing property management company on repairs in the past few months, but their in-house repair team did not address the issue.

Right now we have a trust issue.  We want the root cause of the problem addressed and the problem fixed for good but we are not sure our property management company can manage this repair and/or stick us with unnecessary costs and/or no guarantee of reoccurence.  

Do you think a property management company can handle this sort of stuff?  Or do we need to fly up there and get a hotel and have to supervise this in person as far as interviewing contractors, etc.?  

Anyone have recommendations on a debt collector?  Need to collect about $1,500 in unpaid rent and damages.  I would prefer one that can go to court if needed to garnish wages.  

Hi.

Quick introduction:  I've been in Melbourne for 6 years and part of my day job has me digging through lots of financial transactions looking for certain things.

I looked into buying a multi-family in the past, but for a variety of reasons I don't see myself being in an acquirer of real estate at the moment.  As part of the research process though and in making offers in the past I begin a pretty geekish dive into property appraiser data sets, Courthouse records, permit histories, and property tax payments and started to write some code around these.

Anyway, I was wondering if there was anyone in the Brevard County area (wholesalers, tax lien people, people wanting to identify all the cash buyers in the county, Etc.) Would be interested in meeting to see if they were any mutually beneficial projects that made sense for us to work on.

So far I've done my taxes myself without issue.  I think this was the first time I was not sure of something.  The main thing I want to know is if the mileage from FL counts  (~1400 miles) or if I have to prorate it somehow.  

About a month ago, we had to evacuate to visit family due to hurricane Irma. We have a rental property in the area that we inspected and did some work on while we were there too as a bonus to the trip. I wonder from a tax perspective what, if any part of the trip we can write off?

Sept 7th (Thursday): Drove part way to rental house from FL (~11 hr). Stayed in Hotel for the night.

Sept 8th (Friday): Finished Drive (~5 hr)

Sept 9th (Saturday): Drove ~2 Hr and inspected rental house (approx. 2 hr). Emailed property management company.

Sept 10th (Sunday): Nothing

Sept 11th(Monday): Drove ~2hr to cleaned out and repaired house (~6hr).  Met with property manager.  

Sept 12th(Tuesday): Nothing

Sept 13 (Wednesday): Nothing

Sept 14 (Thursday): Removed trash from property, drove home (~12 hr).

Our expenses were limited to mileage, a hotel, and meals during this stay. 

We have a townhouse that rents for $1,100/mo in Birmingham.  Professionally managed. We live out of state.  Signed new tenant in July of last year always paid on time.  Beginning in Jan of the tenant started to get 15 days late on the rent.  The lease has a $100 late fee split between the PM and us.  The lease is up in four months.  Here is my question:  Should I just refuse to resign the lease or just ask for a bigger security deposit with renewal (like $3,300?).  Reason I ask is that the PM will charge one month rent to find a new tenant plus vacancy and I figure asking for that big payment will cause the tenant to really ask herself if she can afford to stay there.  

Just wondering what other non-residents do for AL State income taxes.  We are getting tired of paying $40 for Turbotax to buy a state where we owe $7 in taxes to AL as a non-resident for our Gardendale property.  

I'll take a copy of the book too if you don't mind.  

I think the main thing I'm looking for is a high level understanding of the business, key financial measures, typical capital requirements, returns, etc.  I'm not waiting a seminar or anything like that, just to get a grasp of the whats involved in notes/tax liens to see if I want to go into this further.