All Forum Posts by: Sean H.

I pay mine $50 per unit, per month. Average rent for me is about $550, so her percentage is actually a bit higher around 11%. Some of my units are in a bit rougher areas, so I can justify her fee because of the job she does. She handles day to day tenant issues, rent collection, tenant placement, basic property maintenance, and eviction proceedings, if necessary.

She does also take a $150 finders fee on the first months rent for each tenant she places. She does not charge any fee for months that a tenant does not pay (awaiting eviction) or the unit is vacant.

Congratulations Josh! This site and its forums have been the biggest help to me in starting my business. Thanks for everything!

What droid apps do you guys use for real estate investing?

Any thoughts on how this lack of deals could be happening?

This is simple economics and needs to be an issue whenever people talk about jobs. A minimum wage is an artificially inflated wage, designed to keep Americans dependent on the government for income. Think about it. The minimum wage in PA is currently $7.15. While many people think this is a great thing, designed to keep people from setting up sweat shops and to keep up with "the cost of living", all it really does is eliminate people from jobs that are worth less than $7.15. What if a person does not have the skills to earn $7.15 on an open market? Before long, this will be discovered, he will be let go and become dependent on the government to survive. But what if he has skills to work at $3 / hour, or $5 /hour? His job has been eliminated when he is perfectly capable of providing for himself.

The biggest question regarding minimum wage jobs is say there is a job that needs to be done, but it does not provide $7.15 in value, it only provides $5.15. That is a $2 loss every hour that person is working. Every day that company will lose $16 for every person that is employed in a position similar to this. How long can a company survive this? It varies of course, but probably before long the company will have to pass this loss on to the customer by increasing prices. Next, people will complain they are not making enough money to sustain their cost of living and will demand a minimum wage increase..it's a vicious cycle that will and can not be stopped until the market is able to determine the appropriate wage for the job.

Nice job B G!

I am also a member of Gen Y, having been born in 1987.

Most of my friends moved to the biggest city closest to where we grew up, which for me would be Pittsburgh. Of course there were some outliers who moved to Miami or Honolulu, but most stayed relatively close.

I personally see people in our generation moving away from small towns to bigger cities, mainly for economic reasons. Our generation has been fortunate enough to put many of it's people through college. The expectation was/is once you attain your bachelors degree, you will be able to land a job with a high enough income to substantiate the high expense of a college education. While there definitely are these types of jobs in smaller communities, they are few and far between and with such a large pool of qualified occupants, there are many losers.

This doesn't take into account all of the entertainment, cultural, etc aspects that will appeal to our generation as well.

One interesting thing that I was not aware of until I started investing. People from other areas of the country, actually receive more government money per month when they move from other parts to my area. It is a large incentive for lower income people to move to my area. So tracing the highest government payments by locale may be a good way to track the population movements.

Unions as a whole are a big reason why this country is in a decline.

Teachers Unions may be the worst. There is no standard for teacher's performance to measured! Teacher's love to complain about a standardized test at the beginning and end of each school year to measure what kids have learned. Which I understand, standardized testing is not the best way to see if kids have really learned anything. But that is not why they are against it. They want no unit of measure of their performance. Imagine a job where no one can tell if you are doing well or not.

Without a measure of performance, there is no way that a teacher can ever be fired, unless they violate a code of conduct, by getting a DUI or acting inappropriate with students. Sometimes, once a teacher gets tenure, a DUI won't even get them fired. In my area, a teacher got into a drunk driving accident and killed a student..he was suspended without pay, DURING THE SUMMER, and then reinstated in time for the school year.

As I mentioned before, the only way that education will really ever change is if it is privatized. Schools will have a much better handle on the quality of teachers and since parents will be paying for the education, they will demand the best quality for their money, thereby eliminating the substandard teachers. I know this will never happen.

I would think that consistency would be a huge plus of using a spreadsheet with the same materials like we are talking about.

I put together a spreadsheet for a very small rehab I am thinking about doing for an apartment. I tried to use homedepot.com and almost immediately decided that I would have to be in the store to really get a feel for the materials I am looking for.

There are a million different options for just about everything. Like you J Scott, I do not have very much contracting experience. How did you, or anyone else, make a solid determination of the materials you would use for each and every aspect? Was it just a matter of looking what was in the neighboring houses for sale, then slightly improving the quality? Did you and your designer just read a bunch of home interior magazines or just buy items that you thought would match well, then learn from trial and error what would work and what wouldn't?

Appreciate the patience and the responses, for some reason this seems to be a big hang up for me in the rehab process.

Thanks for the reply Rich!

1. i have spoken with a property manager who specializes in the particular area. her fee is $50/unit, per month. if a unit is vacant and she finds a tenant, she charges a finders fee of $150.

2. the majority of the renters in the complex are not section 8, but i would guess that they probably could be if they wanted. nothing against that type of person, just the income level they are at.

3. the owner is a teacher who coaches 2 sports. he said he has a lot of trouble making time to manage it in the winter which is a big reason why he is selling. he does not use a property manager.

4. i will agree with you on this. as i was typing it out for this post, i realized the laundry list of stuff to do was a lot more then when i first walked through it in my mind. the property is nearly rent ready when you walk through it and it makes it seem a bit less daunting. his asking price is as low as he can go, stating thats how much he owes on the property, so what would be a good way to remedy this? stipulate some of the repairs are done in the contract?