All Forum Posts by: Michelle Mercer

I booked a flight to ATL July 4th weekend. Let's meet up!

Hi Everyone,

I have been an active investor in Northeastern Ohio area. I self manage 7 buildings, 10 doors here, all BRRRR deals. I recently started to look into real estate deals in ATL. One reason is because my husband's company is opening up an Atlanta office, and recruiting him to join there. Also, well, it's already end of May, and I had to wear winter jacket this evening. (It also snowed not too long ago) So it made me really wanted to move away from Ohio...

Needless to say, the more I learn about ATL, the more I'm amazed! The low property tax, rent/price ratio, and appreciation just sounded amazing. Some deals look so good, made me think I should invest in ATL area even if we can't move there!

Our first goal is to find a "livable rental" in at A/A- neighborhood, this is so we can take advantage of primary residence financing terms and also let us know more about the areas. 

• Preferably a MFH with one side has 2, preferably 3/4 beds + 2 full baths with garage (we have an EV that needs to get charged everyday)
• Or a SFH with 3/4 beds 2 full baths w/ at least 1 car garage.

Then we will live in this "livable rental" for couple years, then purchase our "forever home". Then we want to start to build our portfolio of good return "C+/B/B+ rentals" not too far from our "forever home".

Here is our situation - 

- For livable rentals, I want it to be in a good neighborhood where we are comfortable living in there. My husband's current job can be fully remote, and only go to office once per month. So school system does not matter, commute doesn't matter.

Our oldest is 2 years old. I do want it close to good private elementary school since our oldest one will be at pre-K age in couple years.

- We want our "forever home" to have easy commute to tech companies and good school district. I'm not sure if there are certain areas where all big companies are concentrated in near ATL area. Eventually both of us will want to find new jobs in ATL (IT/Tech type of jobs). So we want to look for a place that has easy commute to IT/Tech job concentrated area.

- For our "rental portfolio", I don't really care about if it's an A+ neighborhood. I had best success in Ohio with B-/B neighborhood. I just want my portfolio to be closer to my forever home mentioned above, so I can take care of things easier.

If you could kindly help me with these questions, I'd appreciate it very much:

1. Are there any areas you would recommend to find a "Livable Rental"? (A/B+ neighborhood, 3/4 beds SFH or MFH with 2-4 beds on one side w/ 2 full baths, no need good school/commute etc.). I'm thinking about spending around $250K, for something that can get $2200 in rent in future. Any areas that's possible? If not, how much should I budget in different area? Can you purchase anything that can still get or beat 1% rule?

2. Respectively, any recommendations for "forever homes" or "rental portfolios"? I'm thinking about forever home in Alpharetta or Johns Creek, and invest in Lawrenceville or Snellville etc. area.

3. For property management, what's the typical fee %? 6-8% of rent + one month rent for lease?

4. How friendly is the law in GA for investors when there is evictions? Personally I only invest in B- and above neighborhood and only had to deal with eviction once due to tenant job loss. But I know the process can be vastly different from city to city.

5. Lastly, throw me names of good realtors please! The ones who are investor friendly,  knows the street, can introduce me his/her "go-to" guys, and the ones you've used before and liked. Especially the ones who are comfortable to take a look at the properties for me since I will be out of state for now!

Recently did this - hired a contractor, they went to estimate the cost of damage with adjuster, and negotiated with the insurance company. We signed a contract that we are obligated to use this contractor if they can negotiate a full coverage paid by insurance. They didn't, contractor quoted $6500, insurance said they will replace half of the roof (damage only happened on one side of the roof), and they figured in depreciation on this roof, which lead us to a $2000 payment after $1000 deductible. Since it's not fully covered by insurance, we can use whichever contractor. 

I went to my roof guy, he quoted me around $4000, so about 50% is covered. This is a 30 years old roof on a big side by side duplex that was planned to replace this summer. 

We recently had some bad wind/storm, every household near that neighborhood had some sort of damages. If you join any local neighborhood Facebook groups, everyone is looking for roof/siding repair. The rental I had was on one of the east suburbs of Cleveland where I used to live. And when I lived there we had several storms tornado or gust that caused us to lose power, but this is the first time that it actually caused damage.

I heard there were tornado warnings happened last week in a town (Hudson) south of where I live (Solon/Chagrin Falls). I'm not familiar with the "typical" rental areas, like Parma, Lakewood, Cleveland city etc. If you join local Facebook group, you can see people posting asking if the power was lost or ISO contractors fixing siding/roof that was damaged from storm or tornado, and ask your tenants to check if there were missing shingles on the roof.

I have an insurance broker near Akron area - pm me.

This might be too late, but my inspector is great - he used to be a builder with a lot of knowledge, not one of those inspectors who get trained 3 weeks and with no experience. PM me for details.

I always just go to big box store, looking for customer returns with minimal cosmetic defects.