All Forum Posts by: Robyn R.

John Chapman and Ryan Logsdon, thanks for the alternate opinions. Now I am really straddling the fence because my initial thought was not to cut away at our current holdings as you've said. I really have to do some soul searching on this.

On one hand I would love to keep the house that I'm considering selling because it will easily be worth 350+ in the next 5-10 years as it is 6 miles from downtown and sits on half an acre.

On the other hand, I've learned a lesson about buying a house in your own neighborhood. DON'T do it! I have to contend with neighbors always wanting to be in my business which is frustrating to say the least.

Also with selling it, we would be able to immediately replenish our cash reserves, pay the IRS, and pay off the 20K loan which would really put me in a more secure state of mind.
My credit would be good again and I'd be able to purchase another property once the husband gets back on his feet and we can keep playing the game and will still have our other two cash positive and appreciating rentals. One has 140 mortgage and is worth about 220 and the other will have a 170 mortgage and will be worth 240 once rehabbed. We get 1750 in rent on the one with the 140k mortgage, 500+ cash flow every month, cant beat that!

Ben Hughes, yup agreed there!

Matt Devincenzo, house we are in now....well that is a whole different story! We will be staying here for a looooong time. House sits on an acre and is 6 miles from downtown, very unique property.
We tried to buy this house about 8 years ago and got outbid, about a year ago it went into foreclosure as a HUD and we were able to get it for about 40K less than we originally bid. Got it for 200K, once we are done remodeling it will easily be a 400k property and that's not even counting in the areas appreciation in 5-10 years. Total keeper:-)

Steve Babiak I'd really like your advice on how we should have screened differently as I was referred to NTN's screening by another investor, so if there is a better service or better way to go next time I'd love to know if it can save me future headaches. Thanks in advance.

Haha, PEACE of mind, not piece:-)

Thank you Eric Hettena Eric Tait Jeff Clawson Al Williamson!
That's pretty much what I thought would be the best solution and I'm glad I asked so that we can have piece of mind moving forward.
There is such a game to be played with money and leveraging etc that I wanted to make sure we weren't missing an obvious option since mistakes have already been made. I'm sure we'll make more, but that's what life is all about!

Neither had any criminal record, I'm assuming he was just blowing hot air. This is a SF residence that rents for 1750 a month and everything on outsourced screening checked out with flying colors, so there was absolutely nothing about either of these two that tipped off that they would be difficult.
The first inkling was when the GF moved out about a week after moving in and we had to started dealing with just the BF. It started innocuous enough with some of his concerns, but then started to become more clear that he was someone who was not all that normal in how he reacted to things. I take responsibility for not hiring the right PM, but there really weren't any red flags on this couple. We did the full screen through NTN and they passed with flying colors. If you have advice on how to better screen tenants, I'm open to suggestions.
It seems that they have their own relationship problems and just want to get out of under the lease and we have ended up in the middle.

Hi all,
My husband and I are at a bit of a crossroads as to what to do next and I'd love to hear what input you can lend. We currently own 3 SF (4 incl our primary res). We do not have a clear business plan as of yet because we aren't 100% sure which niche we want to focus on for the future.

We've been buy and hold thus far with our properties, but we may try a flip on one of the next ones. That said, we don't have a clear cut strategy thus far.

I've already made some newbie mistakes and I'm now I want to move forward and learn from them. Here's the situation:

We are currently finishing up a remodel on a property that we intend to hold for at least five years due to the crazy appreciation Austin is experiencing. Newbie mistake with this deal is that we were anxious to get into a specific area in austin and after three other deals got snatched out from under us, we jumped into this one without paying enough attention to the numbers so we paid over for it than we should of. I'm not horribly worried though because of the appreciation it will experience. I know, that's speculation, but Austin is seriously off the cuff right now.

The problem is, is that we used all of our cash reserves and took out a 2 year 12% loan for the extra $20k we needed to close the deal. Deal closed, and the 20k loan payment is covered by cash flow from one of our other rentals. I feel kind of stupid, but whats done is done and we'll still have cash flow on all 3 properties.

I also have a big chunk of money to pay the IRS for last years taxes on my everyday business and also cap gain from a property I sold in Houston in 2011. Also, some mistakes made there, and I'm committed to doing better.
So, I went from having fantastic credit, to having no cash reserves and a chunk of debt. Add to that, that my husband got laid off two weeks ago and you can see where I'm at.
I fully admit that we are both not good money managers thus far and that this post has made nay of you cringe, but we are committed to learning from our mistakes!

So, we have some choices to make. Would you:

A.
sell a property ....specifically the one that is on our street which we have realized is a pain in the neck to be so close to tenants.
Mortgage is 166K, resale will be about 260k. Take proceeds, pay cap gains and use the rest to get rid of the tax debt and 20K loan and replenish cash reserve a bit. Basically put us back on level playing field.

B.
do a 1031 exchange to build our equity and just worry about the debt later

C.
continue to rent out all three and just keep hanging on?

D.
sell everything, move to an island somewhere and sell trinkets on the beach and drink a lot of rum:-)

Thank you all in advance for any advice!

Robert Steele PM was OneProp, they have offices in Dallas, Austin, Ft Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Tulsa, Charlotte and OK city.
While some offices may be better than others due to staffing, I will tell you the Austin manager has been nothing but a problem and the COO in Dallas has not been very helpful either.
I should have heeded the red flags when I first signed with them. After signing up and had some questions concerning their owner portal, it took me calling my contact in the san antonio office to get the austin PM to respond to me. I had left her two VMs and two emails over the course of a week asking her to call me to answer a few questions. The excuse was that she was out of the country and the person handling her affairs had dropped the ball. She was so apologetic that I let it slide.
The tenants have complained about the same issue of non responsiveness, so even though they are a bit crazy, they still have a valid gripe and I wish they had alerted me sooner that this was occurring. Basically the PM made a difficult tenant situation even worse, then left me holding the bag once it got too sticky. The tenants refused to talk to the austin PM and only wanted to deal with her supervisor, the COO in Dallas. Im pretty sure he was just annoyed by the situation and jumped at the chance to just not deal with the tenant anymore. Seriously poorly run business, stay away.
The tenant said to the austin PM yesterday that "he had two words for her and last time he used them he ended up in jail", well we all know what those two words are, and I'd surmise that at some point or another every PM has dealt with angry tenants, but one would think it is their job to manage a tenants dissatisfaction and not just claim that they were threatened and leave their client with a mess.
So, moral of the story is be wary of Oneprop.
Also, moral for me is to listen to my intuition, I should have cancelled with them right at the beginning.

Tom Goans Thank you for the reminder, I do appreciate the fact that emotion really has no place in a business transaction. Ammo is probably the wrong word for what I'm seeking from a lawyer. I really just want to be armed (again maybe not a good word!) with the correct information about tenant/landlord law. As I'm only three houses into being a landlord, there is so much to learn and I want to be in the know for future tenant issues.
Also, we don't currently have a real estate lawyer to go to if problems do arise, so it will make me feel better to have someone to call for any future legal issues.
Totally in agreement about dealing with this with as little drama as possible and just moving on. Thanks for your advice.

Karen Margrave
I love your ideas for your property! Please invite me if you ever have a craft weekend! Yes, women do tend to be more creative minded. I see possibilities in almost everything, but it always comes back to the reality of whether I'd want to run whatever idea it is as an actual business. The empty supermarket by us would make a great roller ink or my other idea would be an indoor dog park (TX is HOT in the summer), but the reality is, that I wouldn't necessarily want to run either of those businesses. If I was filthy loaded and could just throw money to someone else to do the hard stuff, I probably would...but until the filthy loaded part happens, they are all just ideas. I know there's always the option to seek out investors for ideas, but it would have to be something I'm passionate about. Page Huyette, keep us posted, I love that I'm not the only one with this idea, it just means its a good one:-)

And if I haven't said it enough already,
A BIG THANK YOU to everyone for your input, it has made me feel so much better to have all of you out there willing to give your advice! Bigger pockets is the best!