All Forum Posts by: Rachel Fourquet

Hey Joseph -- 

In my experience, carpet is both more expensive to maintain longterm than other flooring options (due to the constant cleaning and replacing required) and tenants prefer the look of "wood" flooring. 

Carpet tends to stain and hold odor/bacteria, making it overall a hassle to maintain well.

My husband and I added a wood laminate to our unit in Nashville and loved the end result. It's durable for pets, quieter than hardwood (though it looks remarkably like hardwood) and safe for water (should any flooding ocur). Oh! And MUCH cheaper than true hardwood. 

Here is the flooring we went with: Pergo San Marco

The texture and coloring is forgiving and the durability for water allowed us to carry the flooring into the bathroom, which saved us on cost of tiling! Lowes often puts their flooring on sale, so we saved that way + using a Lowes credit card to save an additional 5%.

End results of how the flooring turned out in our unit can be seen in my profile.

Best of luck with your reno!

Hey Brian!

Welcome to the BP community & REI. My husband and I have recently started looking for out next property in the PNW (targeting a few areas) and have a great contact in the Kitsap/Bremerton area:

Jason Greer 

soundrealtygroup.com

I am happy to send you a direct message with his contact info!

Best of luck in your search -- 

This place is lovely! I love how unique and simple it is. It's a great canvas to improve upon --

I suggest the following to make it more modern & appealing without needing to invest a lot in the exterior or change the structure:

• Coat of paint to make it more modern 
  • I suggest keeping it simple with white tone exterior with black accents (on the railing, shutters, trim and sconces) https://people.hgtv.com/professionals/prairie/mode...
• Add shutters on both sides 
• Update the sconces to something a little larger and more modern to add visual interest and take up some of the blank space
• Add simple landscaping on either side to introduce greenery against the simple color scheme of the home

Best of luck with this! I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Hey Chassidy!

For starters, welcome to the community. My husband and I are new to BP ourselves; we bought our first property in 2016 and are currently looking for our next. With that in mind, we still have so much to learn and are glad we found such a solid community in BP. 

My personal advice is two-fold:

1. Contribute. In other words, keep up with exactly what you're doing here! Add to forums, join conversations, start conversations, research. My goal is to contribute at least once per day to a forum and have quickly found success in that; I have gotten direct messages from fellow BP members who have found commonality from the few forums I have contributed to, so my network is already growing!
2. Find your nitch. Once you have cast a big net with contributing to the community, I think it's important to hone in on what is important to you and your RE goals. There are so many avenues to take with RE investing, it can feel overwhelming to try to focus on them all. While I want to connect with as many bright minds as possible, having a focus helps he connect with people that are interested in similar ventures and is far less overwhelming. For example -- 
   1. I have direct messaged people who are interested in or invested in the same markets I am or hope to be in. 
   2. Even more specifically, I am interested in building connections with people who have renovated homes in those markets; I enjoy renovating/rehabbing, so my husband and I are looking for something that needs a little TLC for our next property. Connecting with a BP member who have taken on renovations in the markets we are targeting could lead to contractor referrals, sharing stories of successes or heartaches, etc.

It is my personal opinion that if you reach out to someone with common interest, the conversations will be more organic and you'll build a mutually beneficial connection!

Best of luck as you start your journey --

Hi Adrienne, 

My husband and I are in the same boat of feeling disenchanted with what we are paying for in a management company.

My hope is to self manage our next property and I have started brainstorming what that would look like if our next property is afar .

Here are the main hurdles & potential solutions I have brainstormed:

1. Listing: This is an area I feel confident could be achievable from afar since we keep several images of our long distance property in the cloud.
2.  Showing: this may be the most logistically challenging; but pending how far the property is, I would try to set aside time to get a lockbox / codebox on the door.
3. Background check: perform ourselves.
4. Lease: Digital.
5. Maintenance / cleaning: I have built some connections with contractors in the area of our property already; I am sure building those relationships would be an ongoing effort.
6. Communication: I feel confident handling this from anywhere! I would be willing to communicate with tenants via email or phone.

I am sure this just scrapes the surface of what all self managing will entail, and I am confident there will be lessons learned along the way that I haven't thought of yet.

Also, with the above in mind, all the markets we are targeting are either within a 3 hour radius of where we live, so getting there and back in a day would be feasible. The other markets that we are exploring, we have a connection to already, such as our hometowns where we still have a lot of family that would be willing to help out with logistics. 

I hope this helps & best of luck in your next steps!

That sounds like a great scenario! Keep up the great work. 

I realize I am a little late to contribute, but we renovated 2 bathrooms in Nashville in an extremely short window (1 week) and can't say enough about the contractors we used. 

I managed the projects, so coordinating the demo and install timing on things was key and each contractor was accommodating and fairly priced. 

Here are my recommendations: 

Plumber 

• Henry's Handy Men 

Donna is the point of contact and extremely responsive and organized. 

@henryshandyman

Flooring

• Z construction

Kelly is the point of contact; this duo is timely & reasonably priced for the quality they provide.

http://facebook.com/zconstructionllc

Granite

• Granite Masters of Nashville

Claudia is the point of contact; Granite Masters was the cheapest we found from pricing out countertop options from 5 different providers. Their minimum for install is the lowest as well.

I hope this helps -- I trust these folks and would use any of them again & again on future renos. I am happy to provide email addresses for any of the above via direct message.
 

Best of luck on your renovations!

Love the renovations! It looks very clean and modern. Our first rental property is in the Green Hills neighborhood in Nashville -- such a great city to be invested in.

Do you find that it's a lot of management to keep a month to month furnished rental occupied?

Hey Kyle,

This is an excellent question that I am currently re-assessing myself. We recently rehabbed and rented out our first property 1/2 way across the US.  Our property is in Nashville and we are located in Seattle, so we didn't even entertain the idea of managing the property ourselves. However, having worked with our current Property Managers for just under 6 months now, I am reconsidering this decision. Here is my advice:

• If you use a Property Management company, make sure you feel 100% confident they are the right fit. My husband and I interviewed 3 management companies (which is about all that time allowed for before our move); I wasn't completely confident with the management company we went with, but they were the most financially reasonable by far. As a note, they were $500 up front and 10% per month with no charge to re-list the unit when the tenants move out. The 10% monthly is very standard, but the up front and re-list fees are where you will see the most variation; most being 100% of first months rent. We liked the idea that this management company would not be incentivized to fill the unit with shorter term leases to pop us yearly for the re-listing. 
• Ideally you can manage on your own property. We have quickly learned that they contact us for any little thing; much like a tenant would anyways! Even living 2,000 miles away, we could probably handle the needs of our tenants quicker than adding in a middle man. The communication loop is tenant > Property Manager > landlord (us) > Property Manager > tenant / fix. It has been our quick experience that it is far less efficient. 

With the high level addressed, here is where we have seen value and where we expected to see value but havent:

• Value: They handled all the listings and showings. We did our own pictures, as we did not like the ones they captured. While this was a value add for us as we focused on the logistics of our cross country move, if you have the time to dedicate to a listing, I believe that's the way to go!  They also did the background checks, which you could also do yourself for less than the up-front fee they charge. 
• Lack of value add: The communication loop is inefficient. Ultimately, we are still making the decision on what to do when an issue arises; adding in a Management company adds a layer of complexity. In addition, in our experience, the management company has not treated our tenants to the level of care that we would like. This to me is far worse than just a "lack of value add", but more so a "value reduction". Which is why, IF you chose to go the management route, finding the right one is so key! 

All in all, with our experience so far, we will likely manage our next property on our own; no matter the miles. My advice for you would be to try self managing first; if time, energy or interest doesn't allow for that to run smoothly, THEN look for the right management company to partner with!