All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

The vast majority of US fresh water is contained in the great lakes, so the midwest has that going for us.  Will become more and more valuable over time.

My properties are on on the East end of Lakewood.  Some in Birdtown and some more north.  I am pretty happy with my rents and my value increases over the past two years.  Two of my properties have increased by 30% and 20% in that time.  Two more I have yet to reappraise or refinance but I expect similar or better value increases. I'd like to have property further west but at the price I bought this stuff it's pretty hard to complain.  I haven't had any "crime" related issues as far as I am aware.  The biggest gripe I have about Lakewood is I got screwed by a tenant friendly magistrate who made us start the whole eviction process over because tenant moved out but moved her not-on-lease boyfriend in.  So it cost me twice as much money, and twice as many months of vacancy due to that.  Second biggest gripe is the taxes are not great but the whole Cleveland market is pretty high.

@Nicky Reader

I was listening to this episode on a late night walk Friday and basically went WTF at all three of these same points. Yeah I think it was not one of my favorite guests.

My general thoughts were that the guy is a go getter but seemed to be lacking in the character department. Nothing against “wholesaling” here but I’m definitely not pro-trickery.

100% agree here.  I actually read his book ~2007-2008 and we got hyped and paid off our house, which was awesome.  We didn't really have credit card or student loan debt or anything like what most of his listeners have.  Still, I'm grateful for running across him when I did.  But I grew beyond him and now that I've been investing in real estate, I don't really agree with his philosophy.  I put down payments 20%+ on all my purchases and try to lock them in for 30 years if possible or close to that.

@Jay Hinrichs Almost like 70% x ARV huh? :)

Most expensive tenant turnovers have been in the 10-12k turnover range.  Many of these were inherited tenants so a large percentage of them may have been deferred maintenance / bringing units up to standard.

I did have one tenant who in retrospect I think may have been running an AirBnB scam out of the unit because she was there 1 year and it looked like it had 10 years worth of living in it afterwards, and was 10k to fix up after having just been fixed up before she moved in.

Recently, another house of mine a tenant progressively went crazy and started getting violent / lots of run-ins with police.  Beat up his girlfriend (who he moved in and did not notify to put on lease), smashed up the side of my rental house with his car backing out of the driveway in a fit of rage.  We ultimately evicted this tenant and on his way out (I think just before his court date) he smashed multiple windows out, punched holes in walls / doors, other damage, and left the property wide open front and back doors totally open.  He also managed to knock the garage door off the track and had it sitting on its side in the doorway it was really comical to get that picture...  I found out about because a neighbor called the cops who called me to let me know it was wide open.  Cop was really cool and nice, let me know they had become really familiar with dude over the past however many months and all the neighbors were really happy he was gone.  That ended up being close to a $9k estimate which is just being rehabbed now.

I realize I'm late to the discussion but felt I could chime in with some information.  I am an investor who works with Holton-Wise.  I've been working with them since early 2016 and I now have 20 units under management with them.  I did visit their offices and viewed neighborhoods with one of their team members who has since become a friend of mine - he has help me find several of my best properties even some off-market stuff.  James did pop in and talk to me the day I visited the offices.  I'm not sure if he still does that since they have so many more investors now and he is busy with his YouTube shows.  They have grown tremendously in the 3+ years I've worked with them, and at times there have been growing pains, but the trend has always been towards improved service / better systems over time.  For example, they used to email you property reports as email attachments once a month.  So it would basically be a surprise whether you had a great or terrible month with lots of service calls.  Now there is an investor portal where you can see basically every time rent is collected, or a fee is charged, on any property you have, as soon as it is entered into the system on their end.  You can generate custom PDF reports right from the portal when you need it.  That is a huge improvement from what it was in 2016.  Other aspects of the portal are not as good but this part is awesome and it's a fairly newish (1 year) addition.

I've never really had an issue with them making crazy rent pricing decisions.  They raise rents usually a small amount on a renewal ($20-$40) to avoid turnover and if you do a renovation between tenants that usually will get you a nice bump.  One of my buildings I bought 2 years ago and rented for 2100, is currently at 2350 and I never instructed them on rents for that building.

There are things they could do better at, and in my mind it's mostly making more information about your properties automatically available on the portal - so I want to email them questions even less frequently.  I mostly know the vacancy -> secure unit -> estimate rehab -> do rehab -> advertise -> deposit -> new tenant pipeline but since I have more than a handful of doors now they do all run together and I forget where things are at with any given one.  Unless I go back and reverse-engineer it from the date they secured the unit, often I lose track of where a particular building is in the turnover pipe.

I am going to take small exception with your categorization of this as a barely successful flip.  You flipped a huge project, on your first attempt.  You got it all the way to the finish line.  You made money.  Importantly, you also learned a ton of valuable lessons and leveled up your real estate investing IQ for your next project.  That sounds like a great success to me, setting the 'disappointing' profits aside.  Well done and on to your next project!

@Jay Hinrichs - That's part of why I stick to B class or better areas.  They have value, and rent, appreciation.  I'm just not interested in "high cash flow" rough neighborhoods that are a ton of work but are worth 30k today and will still be worth 30k in 10 years.  The thing I don't like about appreciation -- and it's a minor annoyance -- is it is a bit hand-wavy figuring out exactly how much equity you have built until you refinance, sell, or pay for an appraisal.  It's sort of like the stock market how you have unrealized gains that you need to sell to realize as actual $.  But at least on Fidelity you can see what the realized dollar amount would be on any given day.

@Miguel Nava - Parma & Lakewood do not bill separately for trash.  With the exception of if you have a larger commercial building like my 6-unit, which has a trash contract for around $110/mo.