All Forum Posts by: Henry Paschall

Investment Info:

Townhouse buy & hold investment in Jacksonville.

Purchase price: $115,000
Cash invested: $42,000
Sale price: $168,000

Unfortunately, we bought this property as a buy and hold property, and our research led us to believe that this neighborhood was up and coming not in a bad area of Jacksonville. But about 1 year after we bought the property, they started cracking down on the homeless in downtown Jacksonville moving the crime to the neighborhoods just outside of Jacksonville. One of our residents was robbed outside of this property and we ended up paying for the resident to move out and sold this property.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We love investing into properties that we can hold long term and we have been fortunate enough to have great tenants through our intense vetting process that stay with us for long periods of time.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

This deal was brought to us by our relator and was also a civilian that worked on base that was leaving the area.

How did you finance this deal?

Conventional loan with a 20% down payment.

How did you add value to the deal?

Improved Landscaping, LPV Flooring, new kitchen and bathrooms.

What was the outcome?

This investment was a failure for our family but due to the training from biggerpockets and community the outcome was mitigated.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

The lesson here is never buy into a property that you cannot take your family to and continue to research the area if you are banking on the neighborhood to be improved. Fortunately, we didn't lose money on this property but just broke even. It could have been a lot worse. Make sure you do your research and triple check it and continue to check it.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

The Welch Team was our real estate agent and ProTechTitle was great

Investment Info:

Townhouse buy & hold investment in Jacksonville.

Purchase price: $115,000
Cash invested: $42,000
Sale price: $168,000

Unfortunately, we bought this property as a buy and hold property, and our research led us to believe that this neighborhood was up and coming not in a bad area of Jacksonville. But about 1 year after we bought the property, they started cracking down on the homeless in downtown Jacksonville moving the crime to the neighborhoods just outside of Jacksonville. One of our residents was robbed outside of this property and we ended up paying for the resident to move out and sold this property. The lesson here is never buy into a property that you cannot take your family to and continue to research the area if you are banking on the neighborhood to be improved. Fortunately, we didn't lose money on this property but just broke even. It could have been a lot worse. Make sure you do your research and triple check it and continue to check it.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We love investing into properties that we can hold long term and we have been fortunate enough to have great tenants through our intense vetting process that stay with us for long periods of time.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

This deal was brought to us by our relator and was also a civilian that worked on base that was leaving the area.

How did you finance this deal?

Conventional loan with a 20% down payment.

How did you add value to the deal?

Improved Landscaping, LPV Flooring, new kitchen and bathrooms.

What was the outcome?

This investment was a failure for our family but due to the training from biggerpockets and community the outcome was mitigated.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

The lesson here is never buy into a property that you cannot take your family to and continue to research the area if you are banking on the neighborhood to be improved. Fortunately, we didn't lose money on this property but just broke even. It could have been a lot worse. Make sure you do your research and triple check it and continue to check it.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

The Welch Team was our real estate agent and ProTechTitle was great

 Sorry it took so long to reply, Stessa has had a balance sheet since I have been using it. They recently have added a Schedule E, Schedule of Real Estate Owned and a Stress Test Modeling feature to their reports tab. Don't get me wrong it is great for smaller landlords with single family and small multifamily but, there short-term rental integration along with their new banking system that is now attached needs some improvement. But overall it has worked well for me.

What isn’t good in stessa? I am not a CPA by no means, I have a CPA that I am able to give them all of the data in the tax package that stessa offers and my CPA hasn’t said anything bad. Just Curious.

 When I retire (3 years) I hope to get up to 50 and I will look into larger PM software like Buildium, but currently I only have 6 properties and still a small landlord. But I like to be efficient due to I have very little time to spend and I self-manage all of them.

When I retire (3years) I hope to get up to 50 and I will look into larger PM software, but currently I only have 6 properties and still a small landlord. But I like to be efficient due to I have very little time to spend and I self-manage all of them.

Currently, I use Innago for:

- applications (you can personalize with intro's, logo, and their applications can be modified to questions to a specific property also)
- listings (they automatically list on realtor.com and zumper, I also list on zillow and FB market Place)
- tenant screening (background, credit and eviction history)
- lease signing, addendum signing (this is a powerful one, they allow you to upload a PDF and leave it blank in areas that need to be changed, a good majority of the document is automatically filled in when you select a tenant so all you have to do is verify it and send)
- Documents, (I use this for the walkthrough documents, photo's, anything that is specific to the renter) (I use stessa documents for property specific documents)
- tenant communication (the only thing that I would like to add to their software is scheduled messages, for items like filter replacements ect... you can have a saved template that you just select the tenant and send which is quick.
- maintenance requests (When your tenant or you put the maintenance in you can review it modify it ask questions then send it to your handyman via email with all the information so they can give you a quote on repairs) (it also tracks if they are still open or closed, you can make it where you or both you and the tenant can see the maintenance request which is good because some of the minor repairs I keep track of until tenant turnover so I can fix later)
- rent payments, (they even allow for a security deposit return electronically vice mailing it)

I use Stessa for all of my accounting.

One thing I would like for Innago to add is a calendar option inside of the software. I use google calendar and asana for scheduling and tricking stuff like filter replacements, property taxes, and inspections ect... Rentrei kind of had this but it just linked with your google calendar and I would prefer it to be in the software and just link or be able to link some of the calendar to your personal / biz calendar.

 Sorry for the late reply, I have tried appartments.com they are on my do not use list. They took over the COZY.CO website which I liked that software and completely messed it up. Mostly due to the customer support and lack of features (instead of adding to cozy.co they removed a bunch of features). But if you are just looking for receiving money from tenants they are about as good as zillow or stripe or square lol

 I have not, are they a 1 stop shop for long term rentals?

 Just sent you a DM