All Forum Posts by: Ryan Ball

We had these circuit breakers in one or two panels of a building we purchased.  They were noted in the inspection.  The insurance company actually sent someone out to look at the place and flagged them as an issue.  The insurance company required us to get an electrician to check them out and verify they were working properly and not overheating.  I think it cost $100 for the electrician to check them out.

Agreed - Inspection and financing contingency should cover you.  We always put those in our multi-family offers, unless it is a cash offer and then we drop the financing contingency.  

Are you planning on flipping the individual units or the whole building?  Since you are using hard money, you want to make sure you have a exit plan that can be executed in a reasonable time frame.

We have used Tim O'brien at Zipfel Mortgage (broker) for 5 residential loans and he has found us some good rates. 

Thanks for the response. Yes I have and many are very good. Was thinking of more news type articles versus blog posts. I get similar daily emails for general financial/economics topics for my day job and thought one focused on real estate investor related topics could be useful. 

Would other investors be interested in a website and/or daily email with links to 5-10 articles that deal specifically with topics related to real estate investing?  I have yet to find a resource that provides consistently good and relevant articles that are specific to real estate investors.  My goal would be only to include articles I would personally read, so quality over quantity.  Any input is appreciated.

Doug Brown at Pillar to Post. We have used him 8-10 times and he does a great job. 

Slightly different scenario but most of the small multi families we buy have below market rents.  As a prior poster said, I think a lot of landlords who self manage would rather have stable tenants than higher rents.  You touched on this but the home is likely in below market condition and would need some work to get market rents.  We generally up rents and improve units as they turnover and incrementally raise rents for longer-term tenants.  Why not just sell the properties?  Why deal with these questions when you can likely pocket a nice profit from the properties and let another owner figure out the long-term rental strategy.    

I don't think there is anything different in your evaluation of these older four unit buildings than any newer 4 unit property.  Our market has a ton of 4 unit buildings built in the 1940's, 50's and 60's.  We own six of them, but they were all build as 4 units buildings.  As @John Van Uytven said, the older the property the more maintenance you should expect.  We generally shy away from old houses converted to multi unit apartments because it is hard to tell what kind of electrical and plumbing work may have been done (or not done) over the years.  We have also seen some really weird layouts that make them less desirable to renters.  One place we looked at had such a tight stairway you could barely get any furniture to the upper units.

Saying it is easy to get 15-20% cap rates is a bit aggressive.  We live in Chicago but have been investing in Cincinnati since 2007.  Any property which is that high on a pro-forma basis is likely in a pretty rugged area and something that would need very hands on property management to realize anything approaching that return.  As @Joe Fairless said, property management is key.  I would also add a realtor who deals in investment properties is another important factor, especially when investing outside your area.   

I think you should absolutely put serious time and effort into analyzing a market for buy and hold.  How will you know where to buy, how much rent to charge, rental demand, how much different property types are selling for unless you spend time analyzing a market?  Would you go buy a stock or a mutual fund without analyzing it?  I think the more you know about a market, the higher your probability of success is going to be.