All Forum Posts by: Pamela Gordon

@Sharyn Mousseau believe it or not I funded my first property through my Self Directed IRA and it has worked great. If I had more money in it I would fund more deals that way. It is a great way to invest.

@Trevor Riley the biggest challenge I have now is funding my next deal.  The traditional route wants 25% down and I want to put down more like 15% but maybe I'm not being realistic.  Was also thinking about trying to find a seller finance deal in the Greensboro, NC area.

Have a condo located in Morrisville, NC and so far it's been on the market for about a month and it's not rented yet.  I've had a great deal of showings and inquiries but most so far have been unqualified or ended up picking another unit.  Where are the qualified tenants? (being a little sarcastic here, :-))  I really don't want to budge on the prescreening.  I feel like it's better to set a great foundation then to end up getting the wrong tenant, but I would have figured by now I would have a signed lease already.

How long on average does it take you to find a good tenant?

Does it depend on the time of year?

Just trying to get a feel for other investors experiences, that invest in the area.

@Andrew Postell  definitely will take note of everything you mentioned.  Now I know the questions to ask when looking for a lender...good stuff.

@Jake Wiley thank you for your feedback.  It all makes perfect sense.  I wasn’t too keen on #4 and wasn’t sure why, but you helped me to see that 4 is definitely out of the question 😉.

Hi BP's need your advice.  I recently put a SimpliSafe alarm system, in one of my vacant properties, of course for security and so that I can set up self guided tours but wanted to know what do you do after you get a tenant.

1) Do you remove the alarm system altogether?
2) Do you leave it and tell the tenant it's not activated?  *Document this in the lease*
3) If you leave it and the tenant activates it, can you legally ask them for their access code?  If not, how would you get access to the home if the tenant is not there?  Of course this would only apply in emergency situations
4) Do you leave it activated and provide them with an access code?  This option seems like one more thing to worry about, which I'm not sure if I want to.

Your thoughts, advice is needed.

Thank you in advance.
Pam

@Anna L.  I agree wholeheartedly with @Michael Dumler, make sure to get a copy of the HOA bylaws and covenants, so that you are aware of the rental restrictions if any. The 3 properties I have( 2 condos and 1 townhome), before signing the contracts I found out with the rental regulations were with the HOA and what things to do they cover, versus me, because you also want to make sure that the tenant has a copy as well, so that no fines are incurred. It's really not that bad, you just have to read through it, so that you know the do's and don'ts. Depending on how parking is set up, they have restrictions on that, animals, common areas, noise, etc.

Vacancy just comes with the territory, we would all like to have our properties rented 100% time, but at least for me starting out, that's not the case.  On average it has taken me about 3 weeks - 1 month to fill a property, but it is usually with pretty stable tenants.  I try to be as diligent as I can on the front end with screening tenants and then finally getting to the approval phase, that it takes me a little longer, plus I am new at it, but I account for it when analyzing a deal and make sure I have the funds to cover the vacancy.  Hopefully as time goes on I can reduce the time, but not the screen process.

Don't second guess yourself, YOU GOT THIS!  Good luck and congrats on your offer being accepted. Now the fun begins, :-). 

@Sheryl Chang Mendez Congratulations!  I know it feels good, in such a hot market, to bid a lower, get accepted, close and instant equity.

Hi Everyone:

Trying to find different creative ways to market my rental property.  So far, I put the typical "For Rent" sign in the window, FB Marketplace, various websites(zillow, apartments.com, hotpads, zumper. etc.) But these are typical approaches and just be be the most effective, but not sure unless I ask around.

Are they any other forms of advertising/marketing that I should try? 

What has been most successfully for you?

Have you tried staging on rental?

Would love to hear your approach and feedback...

@Drew Berman yes I agree with @Matt Ziegler https://www.apartments.com/ is very user friendly and it lets you do it all, I use it for one of my properties.  I also use https://www.avail.co/.  Avail has 2 options the free version and the paid one.  The paid one is $5 a month for each property, but the nice thing is you can customize the application if you want or you their standard one.  It is all electronic, plus they have nice features, leases, electronic signature, marketing site (really just a landing page, showing casing your properties, tenant screening, rent payment, rental postings that get pushed to other sites, maintenance requests, notifications that get sent directly to your email address of choice, reports, the list goes on, but I would definitely check them out.  It would definitely save you the hassle and time of printed applications that have to be scanned back in.

I'm only using both because I just haven't consolidated them yet.  Apartments.com was the first site I ran across at the time and just recently learned about avail and figured I would try it out and see which one I like better.

Also, if you go with Avail you can reach out to go daddy to see if they can link avail to it on the backend, meaning if you have a dropdown per se on your website for tenants only, when a tenant clicks on things like resident portal, maintenance request, online payment, application, etc it would really point to avail and it would be transparent to the tenant.  It helps so that you don't have to bounce and keep track of 2 sites, just a thought.

Hope that helps!

@Alejandro Alvarez I actually just had a very similar scenario, earlier today.  An inquiry came in where a business owner wanted to put the business in his name for tax purposes, but he wanted to house his employees and that he doesn't have a problem with the actual occupants being on the lease but he needed his business name on it as well.  Since I wasn't sure how to address the issue, I reached out to the Property Manager that manages one of my properties in Indiana and here was the feedback in a nutshell...which is in line with @Drew Sygit

"We do not lease to businesses. The lease has to be in the occupants names. There are a couple reasons we won't rent to businesses. The biggest is what happens if we need to evict? Taking a company to court for possession is a different ballgame than individuals. Plus you don't know what kind of legal team the company has and how expensive they are going to make the process on you by dragging things out. More likely than not you wouldn't be in small claims court you would be in superior court. That's always more expensive."

And yes, getting a local attorney would definitely help as well.  Good luck!