All Forum Posts by: Norm Kopesky

In my opinion and in my market 

Single family homes will rent out reliably across all tenant classes. It’s a great place to start, the key to their profitability is a low low all in number. Think 2-3% rent over your all in. 
Im not crazy about the live in part, it can slow down the rehab process and only benefits you if you sell. 

The issue we are resolving is tenants falling against the walls busting the rock behind the wall, 

Meant ish 178ish

We self manage 178iah units, my favorite tip is to use 1/2 in green treat plywood for my tub surround backer, then the surround over top. 
we caulk it all in tidy, and the use garage door pvc trim to finish out the edges of the surround. We are getting significantly more life out of our surround kits now. 

We are a local organization of real estate investors that focus on land-lording during our meetings. Those that are just starting and may not have a deal yet, to those that are on the tail end of their careers and are selling of their portfolios. 
come network with us, and enjoy a solid presentation each evening. 
we meet the 2nd Tuesday of every month. The first meeting is free, an annual subscription fee of 200$ facilitates our ability to lobby for reasonable landlord tenant laws. 

We self manage a bunch, the rule of thumb we use is 

1 field tech per 60

1 admin per 100

Good property management software will help you stretch those numbers out a bit further 

As a business owner this allows me to run our business vs be an employee of our business 

looking to restart the thread and get an update from the different members. 
I currently own 4 motels in Wisconsin 

1 under contract 

2 in negotiations 

I had 9 college rentals with about 40 students. I have converted them all over to family housing now. 
A couple reasons why,

1. massive turn over, they all come up empty about the same time. 
2. managing 40 tenants instead of 9 was time prohibitive, this includes training them to be good tenants. 
3. I had a hard time finding insurance for those buildings, and it was more expensive than family housing insurance. 
4. it was hard to get all the rooms filled, cutting into the roi significantly. 
5. student housing in my market had utilities included, rent was more to cover the utilities. But there is time spent paying more bills by my staff. 
6. I was unable to find an outside property management company to hire, thought about starting that up...but the above issues talked me out of it. 
7. They don’t know how to solve the littlest problems.

The other comments listed the pros well and they are valid, but want you to know what you are getting into.