All Forum Posts by: Nam Trang

Request a copy of the orders. He should have no problem giving them to you. Federal law allows him to break the lease if you or him wants to. If you keep him, I would write up an addendum to lease to allow you in the house every so often. Who will cover the utility bills. Get a local point of contact for him or add a family member just in case. I would video tape or photograph the house in case something gets stolen.

@MarieChele Porter For me it depends on the crime committed and the time that has passed. I would consider Non violent offenders who reestablish good work history.

The short answer is that it depends. Most of time it would increase value, unless you're ruining a great view from the house. I wouldn't expect it to increase value by the cost of a fence though, so I wouldn't do it to prep a house for sale.

I'm using cozy now, since it's free. Previously I was using erentpayment.com and I can highly recommend them if you are at all concerned about your tenants pulling any shenanigans. They charge $3 per payment, but they have a lot more features like adding late fees, not allowing partial payments (which can be important during an eviction), and more. The money also hit my account a couple days sooner.

Section 8 is just a program. It's about vetting the people, regardless of the program.

I had 3 tenants on Section 8. One worked her way off the program and she's still in my rental. The other two are pretty boring tenants, they pay their rent and take care of their units. I personally like boring tenants.

@Marshall Swatt I've been in this situation as I'm a legal resident, and when you arrive you start with a 0 zero score. Incredibly difficult to get off 0 as well, and the only way I did it was to finally convince my bank after a year to give me a loan purely to take me off 0 and even then it took a human underwriter to step in. I believe you can do prepaid credit cards through your bank, but that involves paying interest on your own money or something daft iirc.

As for the immigration process, it doesn't take into account credit ratings or score or bad debt from your home country.

I have used https://www.ezlandlordforms.co... with excellent results. They update the state specific leases with all of the new laws for each state.

Don’t forget maintenance and depreciation! To keep everything running well you’re going to have to put at least 1% of your home’s value back into annual maintenance.

Additionally, at some point you’re going to have to spend $4k to $10k replacing your roof, $4k to $10k replacing your HVAC, $500 on a fridge, $900 on a new water heater, and much much more.

I’d say renting it is still a good investment with about the same metrics as one of my own. However there is a lot more you’ll have to spend on than you’re considering.

Cozy.co is the one I use. It's free for both sides of the transaction and I can pull data at the end of the year for my taxes, which lessens my personal accounting. My tenants also like it since it sets up email reminders if they opt out of autopay. I'd suggest something like that to them.

2% rule homes also usually mean you'll be spending a ton of time managing them (evictions, repairs, etc...). Everyone's situation is different. In my area, using rentals to build equity in an appreciating market is a good strategy. Cash flow is slow at first, but after a few years you make it up. Just depends on the market.