All Forum Posts by: Ryan Pyle

Rent to a market rate tenant. S8 in Toledo is not worth the trouble. Terrible communication.

I've had many positive properties. But my biggest loser, a single family in Commerce City, CO that I lost $180k on over 10 years. Fortunately the many other I owned cancelled that out and then some. But Engelo and others are correct, you have to diversify for this business to be somewhat predictable.

I think it was me. Are you still in Chicago?

I third Croghan. They have all of my loans and do a great job. Once you have an established relationship with them they can move quickly. 

Bye bye Mr. Wise!

Hi @Kevin Hofstee, did you end up using Lisa? If so, how is it working out? I'm looking into using it now as well.

Thanks in advance!

I will chime in here in defense of @Engelo Rumora and @Dominique Osbourne. I've been investing since 2004 and started in SFR. At one point I owned 44 houses. I sold them all by 2021. Over the 17 years that I owned houses, they all made money. However, just about all of them had periods where they lost a ton of money, almost always because of a bad tenant. The worst was a horder of things and animals. We found over a dozen dead animals in the house when we turned it. It cost $26,000 to turn that house. Of course all the profit I'd made on that house to that point was wiped out. That tenant started out great and had a mental collapse. It was not something we could have seen via screening. It happens. That's why you have to have a large portfolio to diversify away any one-time events. You also have to have a long time horizon. The OP hasn't given this a chance to work.

Hi Cheryl, I don't own SFR's anymore, but when I did I included water in the rent and just increased the monthly rent by whatever my system-wide average for water usage was. Sometimes I'd come out ahead, sometimes I'd come out behind, but I had enough volume that it pretty much averaged out. There was zero hassle. It also was one less friction point with tenants. For tenants who were high water users, I just gave them bigger rent increases at renewal time. This does work well over time, but you can't sweat it on a monthly basis. Annual rent increases is also key to this working.

Well said Mike. When I moved to Toledo and started investing here in 2005, the only answer to the "Why Toledo?" question was, "because it's really, really cheap." I never, ever considered equity or appreciation as part of my equation. Fast forward to 2021 and it is a totally different city. Lots of excitement, lots of development, and yes, lots of equity and appreciation! Maybe we're growing up. And it's still a great place to raise a family.

I'm not a broker, I'm an owner. But I will second what @Mike Mocek said, but with the caveat that Class B is as high as $100k/door in better areas with higher rents.