All Forum Posts by: Sharon Beatty

We got our basement apartment rented on May 1st - right in the middle of the pandemic. Our daughter and partner are starting to look for their own place now (they've been staying with us). People need a place to live! I will say the new tenants paid the first month's rent and are now struggling. They are all in the restaurant business and they're furloughed. One tenant paid his 1/3 and the other two have moved back home where they know they have jobs. They left their car here and promise to send rent as soon as they can. Their jobs should be back open in August. So while I'm not happy about not having rent, I think they are doing all they can and not taking advantage. 

@Lee Ripma. Hi Lee. Please explain for this newbie, what is a stabilized value add?

Hi all, so now that my husband and I have created a 2 bd / 2 bth apartment in our basement, I have the investing bug! Need to save up some cash and in the meantime would like to develop relationships with other investors here in the Portland OR area. I joined an investment group but find that the monthly meetings by Zoom really aren't enough. I would really like to meet folks in person but know that's not an option right now. What else can I do to get involved in the investment community?  Thanks in advance!

@Bill F.this info was amazingly helpful! I'm hoping to get $60k/yr in 7 years. These numbers will be hard to hit and I really appreciate you walking thru them

@Mathew Wray, thank you! It was a lot of hard work and I'm so grateful we're done. All in it was just under a $115k. Portland is waving some fees when owners agreed to rent long term for 10 years, which we did. We definitely could have done it for cheaper but as we may move in there some day we wanted it to be nice. I think because of that, we had it rented w/in 2 weeks even during this pandemic. We used a property manager to find the renters. At first she told us basement apartments are renting in the area for $1600. Then she toured it and agreed the price we wanted at $1800/mo was worth it. 

In Portland, long term includes month to month rentals and we may entertain that option in the future. But we really wanted long terms renters to begin with so we can take a break. 

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

We have done a house-hack. We bought a single family house where we created a completely separate apartment, otherwise known as an ADU in Portland (auxiliary dwelling unit) in the basement. We bought this fixer-upper two years ago. We spent the first 6 months working on the first and second floors where we live - just enough to make it livable. Then spent the next year and half creating the apartment. Looking to create more passive income!

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

We worked with a local realtor who knows Portland well. This was important as we were new to the area. He steered us to a good neighborhood in an up and coming area of town. The sellers needed a certain dollar amount to pay off the bank. We agreed and gave $10K over their bottom line with the stipulation that we get that money at closing to help with improvements.

How did you finance this deal?

VA loan - 0% down

How did you add value to the deal?

Lots of sweat equity! My husband is a handy guy :-)

What was the outcome?

We are finalizing a refinance. It's for 200k over what we paid two years ago. (Combination of adding value through the rental unit and improving the overall property, along with prices increasing in our area).
We will take 100k to pay off personal debt acquired creating the apartment and leaving the other $100k in the house for now.

@Dmitriy Fomichenko. Thanks for the "How to" tag someone. Fairly new to this site and that info is helpful!

@Lucy Iburg. Lucy, Airbnb short term rental market is taking a big hit right now. I'm sure it will recover but it will take a while. Would this be a worthwhile investment if you had to do a long-term rental with it for the next year or two?

I have a friend who built an ADU (ayxilliary dwelling unit) to rent as an Airbnb property. It is a lot of work because of the constant turnover and cleaning required. Is that something you'd be comfortable doing?

Daniel,

I'm sure you've seen info from Kol Peterson, he's Portland ADU expert, having written books, etc. I assume you're getting this permitted? It won't be cheap but will add value to your property. We just completed a basement ADU. Happy to share our story if you want to connect

@jejjoi My husband and I just completed a 2 bd /2 bth ADU in our basement. We have friends that developed an separate ADU on their property, also 2 bed/2bath. Happy to connect and share our stories if that's helpful to you