All Forum Posts by: Matthew Mucker

Ben, you can create a list like this yourself for free. Your local county tax appraisal district has information that shows when the title to each piece of property last changed hands. This is public information, and in my county at least is a free download.

Just look for properties that haven't changed owners in x years.

I have a tenant in a SFH who has been renting for a year. I couldn't ask for better tenants; they have taken very good care of my property.

On Saturday, I was called because the drains were backed up. We called a plumber to snake out the drains. At weekend rates.

The plumber discovered the clog was due to feminine hygiene products. My understanding is that manufacturers claim that tampons are safe to be flushed down the toilet in municipal sewer systems. The lease says tenant is entirely responsible for, "...damage from wastewater stoppages caused by foreign or improper objects in lines that exclusively service the property."

So who pays for this? Is clearing the drain line a "damage?" Is a tampon that the manufacturer claims can be flushed a "foreign or improper object?"

The lease is in Texas, if state law plays into this at all.

I just did some slicing and dicing of my county's appraisal district database. It appears that there are about 142,000 residential non-owner occupied properties in my county.

What criteria would you recommend that I use to whittle this number down to a more manageable number of leads that are the most likely to be profitable acquisitions?

I realize there are many answers to this question; I'm just curious to hear the various opinions out there.

I used Click2Mail once. It took 6 days from upload of list to postcard in mailbox. Unacceptably slow.

That, and the postcard I got, along with the 3 that were returned to me undeliverable, ALL had ink splotches on them.

Very poor quality, IMO. I don't plan on using click2mail again. I'd rather pay more and get better service from someone else.

Find another source. If they don't want your money, I'm sure there's another company out there that does.

Because you're calling as a principal in the transaction, my interpretation (and others in REI that I've discussed this with) is that you're not 'soliciting' anything. You're calling to complete a transaction that they want.

If you were an agent calling to try to get a listing, or a third party to a transaction, that'd be different.

Standard IANAL disclaimer here.

DFWREIN is pretty much dead, I think.

If you want to pay for mentoring, check out roddy.com.

Not a chance. Even if the tenant gets appropriate insurance, you can STILL be held liable if the tenant's dog causes harm to someone else. If a plaintiff wins a lawsuit against the owner for more than the owner's policy will pay, you'd better believe they're coming for you next.

While it's unfortunate, it's a reality of life, litigation, and insurance. I have too much at stake to ever take that risk.

Texas is a very pro-landlord state.

My county (Tarrant county, Texas) has the appraisal database for free download. There are separate columns for property address and owner address. If they don't match, it's an absentee owner.

Granted, this approach requires some programming skill, but you could probably hire a script monkey to pound out something in a week, and that script would be able to generate a new list for you any time you'd like... just download the latest version of the database from the county and run the script.