All Forum Posts by: Rob Orazi

I use Cozy. Basic but effective.

As far as screening tenants goes everything that Deanna McCormick said should be followed to the T. As for your real estate agent, their job is advertising the property, do you know how he or she is doing that? If not call and ask. If the agent says they put the home into mls which populates to hundreds of other sites then that's great. You need to do some searches on your local rejoin to find a where others market their homes locally. Id start with craigslist, homes for rent by owner, if you are near a military base there are several sites that are specific to military families, if you are near a college there will be boards for posting housing. Talk to a property manager in your area as to how and where they advertise. Just some thoughts. 

Is this the only site you are using to advertise the property? If so I would put it up on as many other sites as possible including zillow and craigslist. 

Pre screen the folks that are calling and add a application fee. 

The other thing to remember is there is absolutely a population of prospective tenants that may have some credit dings or otherwise on paper cant call themselves a high quality tenants. However that does not make them bad tenants either. Sometimes is just a gut feeling after all the due diligence on your part is done. I would install 5 non-negotiable standards for example 1. no smoking 2. no evictions 3. monthly income is __ of monthly rent. 4. what ever and 5. so on... You need these to show that you don't discriminate should it ever come to it but at the end of the day you just have to make a judgment call with the information you have gathered.

Are you buying in the resort community because you want to use the property when it is not rented? If so you should not classify that to yourself as an investment property but a vacation home. I will tell you from experience trying to make money on a property that you use is difficult. Renting a vacation property is difficult. 

On the other hand if you are looking to place a long term renter in the property my question is why would you go out of your home market? Especially for your first one... Do you know vendors in the area of the rental? Do you have a plan to go up there and show the property to prospective tenants? Or are you going to hire a property manager? If so are you sure you can rent it for enough to pay the mgt fees, hoa fees and mortgage? You may not have a mortgage I don't know but my point is that remote long term rentals are expensive bottom line. 

I'm a property manger and the biggest issue I have is with remote land lords who are paying my fee, paying the HOA and have a mortgage. More often than not they are only cash flowing a couple hundred a month. Then (hopefully) setting aside 20% of that a month for repairs.

Example $1200 month in rent - $120 mgt fee - $850 mortgage - $85 hoa fee = $145 - 20% put into maintenance account leaves $116 of cash flow a month. 

Im sure you have already done the math and yes getting $116 a month for an appreciating asset is great over time. My suggestion is tho if you are working your first deal do it closer to home for a long term rental buy and hold. You will appreciate that the lessons learned portion of your experience wont be so costly. 

Buy the book Modern Real Estate Practice in NC I'm not sure what the current edition is at this time, its 8 or higher. Start reading that book, read as much as you can prior to starting the class. 

The stats don't indicate that people fail the test (by majority) due to the math portion of test. The problem is terminology and word definitions. Real estate lingo is its own thing and they test heavily on your ability to understand rules and supporting information on the state test and national test. 

Also if you haven't already checked, the instructor and the school make a significant difference. There are plenty of published stats from the Real Estate Commission that indicate schools with the highest pass rates and which instructors have the highest pass rates as well. If your school or instructor aren't on the list make a change it will make a difference. 

Good luck go Navy

Do everything that @Matt W. indicates. Also contact the commander of that Marine's command. Tell him or her the whole story plus the legal info sited by Matt W. You may be end up with the public relations officer but start at the top. This guy will not want the leadership in his command being all in his business plus if it turns out the law is on your side he will get is *** handed to him big time. Id be sure to tell them that last text that you received from him as well. 

I don't tell you this lightly the Marine Corp has an unbelievably high expectation of level of professionalism and they have a unique way of dealing with their own. (He wont be beaten like in the movies.)

There are too many folks out there that don't need to be land lords for reasons just like this, not having a good understanding of the rights of the tenant all for the sake of being in business. As a property manager I turn people like this away from my service all the time. 

As a property manager I think a PM that has good infrastructure is a good start ask a good many what if questions during the interview. Good thing to know is how many properties do they manage? then ask how many units does their largest client have? Couple things you get from these 2 questions 1 do they have enough staff to properly manage their properties and too if the firm has 80 properties and 40 are from one owner who do you think will get the most attention? Also you might want to know if the PM has their own properties again whose properties are getting the most attention. Ask what you specifically get for the monthly fee? What are extra charges and how much are they, then ask on average how much extra gets charged per month per client. The larger ones will have a goal to up charge per month they may not want to tell you that number but they have it. As a PM I dont collect a fee if dont collect the rent. So that may be an item to discuss as well. None of it is intrinsically good or bad. Its like hiring any other vendor do you think you care to build a working relationship with them or not. There will be things you like and don't like about all the folks you interview.The small guys is going you are really going to like but you'll be worried that he is over extended already, the large guy your worried is going to nickle and dime you to death.  So find the best fit and if doesn't work go find someone else.

Check with an attorney or property manager in the area and have a very clear understanding of the eviction process. You could likely find this on a the city or county web site or go to the court house and speak with the appropriate clerk. It typically laid out in great detail in most all communities. And if you follow the process its easy to stay out of trouble but know the process of eviction. Reason being even if they breach the contract they still have legal rights to the property until the eviction is recognized by the court. 

As for collecting any rent from the guy your going to spend more time chasing him around for it than its worth IMO. You would be better off spending your time making repairs, correcting varmint issues, and finding a well qualified renter. 

I would spend a good bit of time prior to interviewing your next prospective tenants in deciding what a good tenant would be and what a bad tenant would be. Somewhere on this site is a great blog about how to screen tenants. i cant find it right now but I know its here. You should have a hard set of parameters your tenants should meet ie no evictions ever, %of monthly income to be used for rent, etc. etc. Finally you might want to look into any of the several websites that allow landlord to collect money electronically that tracks payment history etc. Finally you will want to talk with your bank about setting up a trust account to hold security deposits. That money should not be mixed with your funds... because it not your money. 

So that a lot to start with... 

There is a meet up group called Deal Maker Sessions that will be a great place to network. They have a face book page and meet once a month at a hotel over by RDU airport. I attend several times a year they seem to always have 15 or so properties presented plus what ever is posted on the face book page that moves between meetings. 

Id bet dollars to doughnuts that the extra square footage is not properly permitted. If the municipality does not think it exists it does not exist, that's what I tell my clients when we run across this sort of thing.  

No never trust the seller. There is a good chance they don't know there is a problem. They may have hired a contractor who did not do their job properly. 

The really bad news is when you call the city or county to come look at the new area of the house there is a very high probability that the inspector will tell you (or the seller) they need to see inside the wall which means pulling down the sheet rock or paneling or what ever then if they find a problem with the electrical or how the studs are arranged they will want that to be fixed or worse case they find it structurally unfit and have it torn down.

The square footage is easy enough to verify what is actually on the house. Measure the length of the outside walls. Subtract 6 inches from each wall length to account for the wall width and you will have a better idea for the square footage footprint of the house. Depending on how the law in your area accounts for cooled or heated area there may be some space that doesn't count then subtract that area out and you'll have that much clearer a picture.