All Forum Posts by: Scott C.

 I don't have experience in the City but my first mentor/realtor was unloading his City rentals due to what he thought was a unfavorable landlord environment in the City.

Price wise I'm sure the County is a little bit more expensive on average for the same type of neighborhood.  I just think it's less risky and higher appreciation potential.

My 2 cents... :-)

I need a source for used appliances in the Baltimore area. I have a tenant occupied property where I need to replace the fridge and my normal contact is unresponsive. Any contacts would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Scott

I want to look more into the City but I just haven't yet.  I don't know the neighborhoods yet so I have been sticking with the SE Baltimore County areas (Dundalk, Middle River for now). 

I chose those areas because I know them better and you can get townhomes in decent shape for 50-80k range.  I also have been able to turn them around to Sec 8 properties getting $1500/month.   I also like it that the taxes are lower than the city.  It is also more convenient for me to get down there since I am self managing them for now. 

Who knows what the future holds but I think there might be more appreciation potential then the city but I'm not banking on that.

I have rental properties in 3 rental properties in Dundalk and 1 in Middle River.  I like both of these areas.  I know if it's a not a big sample but my property Middle River took a little bit longer to find a tenant than my Dundalk properties.

Scott

Welcome to BP!

This may be a stupid question but I wanted to get some feedback from the community. We are rehabbing our third rental property and I have a handyman doing most of the work. One of the things I needed him to do was to fix a ceiling in one of the bedrooms. As he was trying to reattach these ceiling tiles he nicked one of the radiant heat lines in the house. This leak now needs to be fixed for the heat to work again and the repair is going to cost between $400 - $600 dollars because they use stainless steel pipe in the system. Should I make the handyman pay for this repair? His total work on this job is probably going to run me about $1000 so this will pretty much wipe out at least half his take from this job if I make him pay for it.

I have used this guy before and he does good work and is reasonable on his prices. He is also dependable.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Scott

Thanks, Brandon.

I vote for using leverage. As long as the analysis was done correctly and you get a property that provides positive cash flow.

We are currently financing our third property. Our first two deals were cash deals but we felt that by financing the third deal we would be able to keep some cash reserves.

Scott

Welcome to the BP community!

This week I had an issue with an appraisal on a property that I am financing. The appraisal came in $3k less than the purchase price. I would have to bring an additional $3K to the table at closing. Thanks to the BP podcast #7 I was able to dive into the appraisal more intelligently than I would have before. After looking at the appraisal I realized that the appraiser used three comps that were over a mile away They weren't even in the same zip code. After a five minute search on Redfin I was able to find 4 comps in my same neighborhood that had been sold within the last 3 - 6 months. All of the comps were considerably higher than my appraisal. I forwarded these on to my lender and in two days they modified the appraisal up by $20k.

Thanks BP podcast and Ryan Lundquist!