All Forum Posts by: David Friedman

As a property management company we always do the following:

Credit Check, Background Check, Income Verification, Call Current Boss, Call Current Landlord. We do not call the numbers provided by the tenant unless we can verify ourselves first that their paystubs are from a legitimate company in which case we will just call the company and ask for their manager. If a potential tenant provides us some fishy looking documentation or something doesn't match up that tenant immediately removed from my list. I don't have time to hear ******** sob stories and I don't have the time for an eviction. Desperate people do desperate things. If someone is acting desperate I stay away from them.

It looks like you are in Riverside, CA which is a growing city. I wouldn't worry about losing one tenant over losing 30 days of rent. And even if you did agree to hold the place for 30 days, I would still absolutely charge them first month's rent and deposit in case they bailed. I would just attribute that rent to the month they move in, but I would still have it in hand. If they can't or won't do that then it is a red flag for me as a property manager. You could tell them you will continue to look for a tenant and if it is still available in 15 or 20 days then you will reach out to them.

You could send them a notice requesting it and they could choose to ignore it. At that point you would probably have grounds to send them notice to vacate, but it depends on your state and city.

I would not increase the base rent to include the solar. I would include it as a separate fee that you mention in the listing. If you were quickly scrolling through zillow as a renter and saw an exact replica of your house for lease, but yours was priced $100 higher, you would probably skip it. Don't expect most tenants out there to deep dive on why they should pay more to rent your house because it has solar. Market it at comparable rent in the area and add the $100 or so per month as an additional fee.

(1) With HGTV and other shows, it became cool to invest in real estate. Add to that all of the cash that is floating around due to stimulus and hedge funds buying with cash, I would say it was more competitive than I had ever seen until just recently. With interest rates pushing above 7% if you don't have cash, most deals on the market just don't pencil. We will see prices come down, but there are plenty of people on the sidelines waiting to get in. I think more importantly you should ask yourself, which niche of real estate do I want to get really good at? Then you can start to perfect running the numbers for those types of deals or finding better contractors for those types of deals. You want to create a competitive edge for yourself.

(2) Anybody who tries to answer this question without saying "It depends" is just lying to you. You could buy a property tomorrow and the FED might raise interest rates by another 2 percent. Or the government could give out $2,000 more in stimulus checks. It's hard to say. You can make deals happen in any kind of market, up or down. It's a numbers game. If you try to predict too far out you will sit on the sidelines. If you think the market will get better in a year or two, then find a desperate seller and negotiate a deal that you can profit on today.

(3) Not sure if this is allowed in your state (I am in California). I would create your first LLC when you are in escrow on your first deal. Make offers like this: "Nef Ojeda or assignee." Then you can assign the contract to your LLC or you can even wholesale the deal to another investor if you want.

Blown insulation works pretty well, but if it is really bad you can get acoustic drywall and install it over the existing drywall. Depends on your budget. Now is the time to do it if the unit is vacant.

A month of missed rent will likely be more than the cost of storage regardless of where the property is in America. If the law allows you to move it and you can do it without damaging their personal items, I would move it.

Thank you @Michael Le! You are correct that it wouldn't work without their land.

What if the two land owners can't get approved for $20,000,000 in construction financing and need me on title to get approved?

Thank you @Chris Seveney

That definitely seems like the most simple way to set it up.

What is a fair development fee these days for a $30,000,000 project? 3%? 5%? Should I set benchmarks that if met gives me a higher percentage?