All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Rehabbing in the ATL market, we've got commercial accounts and discounts @ Lowe's and Home Depot, so we price shop between the two. We buy Frigidaire Gallery.  

Tim: A $10,000 house needing only minimum repairs? Paint and carpet only? How about a leaking roof that damages your tenants brand new HDTV? Or old plumbing lines and fixtures that fail in the middle of the night?  Or worse an outdated electrical panel that causes a house fire? This may sound extreme but they're choices (ethical or business?) a landlord must make when investing in $10K houses, and I've bought several. 

Two less sanctimonious and more practical points:

1. Section 8 pays well but be prepared for rough treatment of your property because of the number of occupants.

2. Forget the carpet, tile the whole place with inexpensive commercial tile. After the second tenant moves out, you'll be money ahead. 

Forgive my moralizing tenure, my kids have been preaching to me about Bernie.

Good luck,

SMC  

Gene: Welcome South! Despite it chaffing my #@%$&, it is a common practice. The old statue required the seller to provide a termite letter, but it was changed a few years ago; however, nobody told the termites.

It's more of a bond than a warranty, and you're right--it's insurance. The inspection is an annual premium. As a practice, I have termite bond on all my rentals and flips. Most buyers ask for a termite letter, and it's not that expensive.

Two choices:

1. Shop for a cheaper warranty.

2. Decide not to play and trust the termites are busy elsewhere. In Savannah, hot and humid, I'm not sure I'd make that bet.

Good luck

You don't say what area, but what's potential for easy resale and price appreciation? 

Also, what's the property condition?

Melissa: Even though there's been some rulings against the protection of a single-member LLC, setting up a GA LLC is a good 1st step. It provides a minimum of liability protection. Once your portfolio grows you can consider a more complex strategy that offers more legal protection and tax benefits. Good luck, Steve

A sign is deterrent to a perceived threat of the crime. They have those in Buckhead. The cage means they're actually jacking a/c units. 

Craig: Welcome to neighborhood. I've been investing in the Coweta-Fayette market since 2012. You're headed in the right direction by joining Bigger Pockets. 

My two suggestions:

1. Learn your market-study the schools, the neighborhoods, the crime statistics, which price range house is the selling fastest. I've got a wall map hanging in my office. 

2. Learn the numbers-when you boil it down all real estate investing comes down to the return on investment. If I invest this amount of $ what will I make. This site has some very useful tools in this regard. 

My wife is my realtor. She buys and sells all our properties through her Keller-Williams office, so I think I've got a great realtor, but I might be bias. 

Good luck. Feel free to call me if I can help.

Steve and Donna McCondichie

We went looking for house in Decatur this weekend for my single daughter, and if we saw a neighborhood with caged a/c units we crossed it off the list. So selling the upside to an owner-occupant might be a questionable. 

But flipping over the coin, Grasshopper, I've sold SFR rentals in the 30310 zip code, Oakland City area, to out-of-state investors, and there it was a plus, offering a safe, secure, ready-to-rent property is truly turnkey. Installing a cage on a class-c rental property is good business.

Mindy: I appreciate the clarification.

What does it mean when someone request to join my company profile?