All Forum Posts by: Mike O'Connor

Hi All - We have a property in Cobb Co., GA and while everything is going great, we are dealing with one annoying issue that we cannot get our arms around - tenants leaving trash around the complex. The property is only 32 units, so it is not big enough for us to have a full time employee on site to help manage this, but we do have someone on site 2 days a week and then pay someone to do a sweep of the grounds 4 days a week.

It seems that even if we pick up at 9am, there is trash by 3pm. The neighbor across the street has made it her personal mission to call code enforcement every day, even for the smallest of trash violations (most days the violations are very minor from what the contact at code enforcement told us). However, we have just received our first citation from Cobb Co. even though most violations are small. Code stated that they legally have to serve us the fine.

Does anyone have experience with managing trash on a property and /or dealing with the neighbor / county? We have added extra trash bins, hired help to pick up the trash and our next step is to install cameras on the property so that we can start levying fines by catching people in the act.

Any creative ideas would be much appreciated.

Mike

@Matt Wood@Azeez K.@Kiran K

Thanks everyone for coming out - it was great meeting you all!

@Paul Smythe

Glad to see that we will have a good crowd make it out - looking forward to meeting everyone there on Saturday.

@Paul Smythe

@Roger Vi@Chris Seveney@Micki M.

Thank you all for your input! After spending a week in the rental, and doing some research on some of the numbers (insurance and prop. mgmt.), I think I am going to stay away for the time being... If I were able to live closer to the property to keep a better eye on it, and thus the maintenance / management, it may have some potential. 

I appreciate you all taking the time to share your thoughts.

Mike

Hi all - My extended family and I are currently on a week long vacation in Garden City, SC (south Myrtle) and are all staying in an ocean front beach house (extended family is here, so we all pitch in to make it feasible). As we were looking for the house we wanted to rent, I was reviewing the weekly rental costs and, to put it simply, it isn't cheap.

So, my question is... does anybody focus on vacation rentals, specifically beach front rentals? Do the numbers make sense? While the weekly rental rate is high (even in off season months), I would imagine that the costs associated are also extremely high... insurance, property management, maintenance, repairs, etc. I know, from our personal experience, that vacation renters are also very needy and expect everything to be perfect. Also, I know that they are fully booked in the summer months, but what does vacancy look like in the winter?

If anyone has perspective on if the benefits outweigh the costs, I would love to hear it!

Mike

@Dianna Brooks,

Send myself, @Matt Wood, @Azeez K. or @Kiran K a PM and we can connect to learn more about your RE interests and goals. What part of Atlanta are you looking to invest in? The real deals are not easy to come by but as long as you continue to network, leverage your resources (e.g., BP) and stay motivated/patient they can be found! 

Mike

Thanks all!

@Joel Owens, the final purchase price was $640k, with 40k of that being put into renovating 12 of the units.

The land use restrictions are still in place and we are actively working on determining if we can fully clear them out. However, since the numbers still looked great on paper whether they exist or not, we still closed on the deal. We would be happy to meet up with you in a month or two once we have more/less/or no progress on these restrictions. Either way, dealing with these restrictions to date has been a very interesting learning experience.

I agree with @Azeez K., the price per unit is too much. 

Do you have any specifics around the rent roll, deferred maintenance, master metered vs. individual metered and overall performance of the property? Getting details on specifics like these would help you negotiate much better with the seller.

Out of curiosity, you mention 70k total investment... I may be missing something, but cannot determine where you pulled that number from based on the info you provided.

Mike