All Forum Posts by: Rich Schroeder

It is important to know your local laws! In my area, you cannot force a tenant to get renter's insurance. What does your lease say regarding dogs?

I use carpet as a last resort. My SFH's are old, so they all have hardwood floors in them. I paint the floors with an oil based floor paint. These are middle class homes. The renters love the look and it costs me $0.05 per square foot to paint over in between renters. For kitchens and baths, I use commercial vinyl tile. It is expensive but is colored all the way through (keeps its color when chipped or scuffed), is completely water proof and will last for years and years.

who cares? Unless it's a high end rental, I wouldn't worry about it. If you don't take smokers, you've just decreased the rental pool significantly.

I am routinely finding 3% deals. It's great, but I had to make some tough choices to get here. I had to pick up my life and family and move. Looking back, it was a great move. I love the area in which I live and it's close enough to my investing area to make it relatively easy to work on. In todays market, I would not even recommend doing 2% deals. Or at least I would make that my minimum requirement.

PEX is not approved by all cities. If you have a crawl space, it probably doesn't matter what kind of water lines you have...as long as they are not leaking.

I wish I had started out as young as you! At any rate, my recommendation would be to get one or two more jobs. Work your butt off and save as much money as you can so that you can pay cash for your first property or two. That would be a great way to get started, as I'm not a big fan of leveraging when you first start out.

My local bank will go 75% LTV. It is a local bank. This is with very good credit and significant assets. Not sure what you're thinking of doing is what I would do. As mentioned above, student loans are low interest. Can you refi and get a better rate than your current student loans? Also, be prepared to incur closing costs.

The law in my state is that we have to accept a renter's pulled credit report if it's within 30 days. Make sure you know the law.

the only relationship I want with my renters is one of business. They pay me money for a clean, safe place to rent...and I try to get them to do what they agree to do in the lease. That's it! I don't want to buy them flowers for Valentine's day, or beg them to stay for years in exchange for late rent and letting them slide on a few things. All the while they are trying to figure out how to hit the "landlord lottery" from some rich (appearing landlord).

I recommend treating the business as a business, not like give/take relationship or marriage.

someone can be viewed as an employee if you cut them a check or give them a break on rent.

Just saying...be careful.