All Forum Posts by: Mitch Kronowit

We only have one tenant who smokes and he's paying $50/month more than the last non-smoking tenant.

Remember, rents are negotiable. I will gladly lower the rent a few bucks to get a more desirable tenant, and I will charge more commensurate with risk. Of course, this is within the limits of reason. I will not rent to a very high risk tenant (low FICO, past evictions, etc.) regardless of how high a rent they say they're willing to pay and I won't just give the place away to a model tenant.

My wife and I did something similar a few years ago, but with some big differences. I already had several property notes under my name, but my wife had zero. Her credit score wasn't as high as mine, but her income was good, so she applied to purchase the rental property all on her own and got approved.

Not sure how it would work with a no-income primary borrower, but it's a good question.

Is there somebody going around telling people you can make "all cash" offers without having the cash? No wonder so many real estate agents don't want to deal with "investors".

If you do NOT have the cash in your possession or under your DIRECT control, you're NOT making a cash offer. If somebody else has the cash, then perhaps THEY should be making the all-cash offer.

Probably, but if the price for having a tenant who pays $50/month more than the last tenant on time, every month, is disposing a coffee can full of butts at the end of a year, then I'm all for it.

I have one tenant who is ideal, however, he does smoke. I told him smoking isn't allowed in the unit at all, but outside is ok (the premises has two balconies). He agreed, but I also made him pay an additional $300 deposit and explained to him if there are any traces of smoke inside when he moves out, I will take the $300 and whatever I need from the main security deposit to repaint and re-carpet the place.

The LLC's manager is NOT a property manager. They're simply the agent representing the LLC, so they sign leases, business license applications, state filings, etc.

Our tenants deal directly with our property managers.

Sure. Our LLC is manager-managed, so my name doesn't appear on any State documents, only the names and addresses of our manager and resident agent. Our tenants receive leases signed by our manager as well as all other official and unofficial documents.

We did have a lawyer form our LLC for us and we stressed how important privacy was, so he set us up with the manager-managed LLC. Sure, it was more costly this way, but we were new at it and didn't want to screw it up from the get go.

For the rest of you reading, you're not really paying an attorney to file the formation papers with your state... nearly anybody can do that and pay the minimum necessary fees. What you're paying your attorney for is writing a strong formal operating agreement and advising you how to best conduct your business, taking advantage of the benefits an entity provides.

You should have both, insurance AND some sort of limited liability entity. It's not a choice between one or the other. It's possible your LLC may get set aside in court, so you better have insurance. There's also a possibility your insurance carrier will deny your claim, so it'd be nice to have an LLC to fall back on. Also, we like the privacy our LLC provides us. Most of our tenants don't even know our names.

I tell everyone to think layers of an onion. The more you have between you and a law suit, the better.

I think I've been better off EVERY four years. If you can't go nearly half a decade without improving your lot in some manner, you're doing something wrong.

So much for the 1-2 year "Stepping stone" job to the majors. Have you told them about real estate? I tell every airline pilot under 50 to lay tracks elsewhere. This profession is going the way of the maritime industry.