All Forum Posts by: Tariq B.

Greetings everyone, 

So had a work order submitted to me about water being on the kitchen floor and the freezer not working properly and having defrosted. Mr appliance was sent out to the property and he determined that there are two buttons on the fridge that when pressed simultaneously it puts the fridge into demo mode effectively shutting it off, which is what caused the fridge to stop working. He charged $99 for a service call. In your opinion who is responsible for payment to Mr appliance? I will add the tenants moved in a week ago. 

Not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure by law the tenant is not liable and the money should be returned. I interpreted the law as you can only charge lost in rent for months you had the house sit empty while you advertised. If They had moved in on the 15th the prior tenants rent should have been prorated and payed back. Also just because it is in a lease does not make it legal. 

Yes tax assessments are high in the city, and good luck fighting them down with out pulling your hair out, but it never hurts to try. You can get some very very attractive cap rates here, especially if you want to deal with the "rougher" parts, not the worst parts just places that I wouldn't live. The more risk you take the more reward for example the last place I finished after expenses I am getting an ROI of roughly 56%, these kind of returns can be had quite easy in Baltimore. If you want to deal with more appealing places then 20% is easily attainable too. Just depends on your business plan and how aggressive you want to be. But all in all Baltimore City is like any other market you will have your good and bad tenants, I don't find it tougher than other markets, unless you are dealing with the courts, as it can be extremely tenant friendly.

I always choose option A. Always...but that's my niche I aim for places that are cheap where I can do the work myself. It wouldn't really work out so well if I had to pay someone to do everything. 

Pretty cool thread. I would say I have had some pretty good success by mid 20's. I started in real estate at 21 built up to 4 payed off properties by 24 owning a total of 6 about to be 7 soon. I make enough through rentals to the point where I question leaving my salary job, but still unsure if I want to or not, so you could say I have already achieved financial freedom. I think it's all a mindset you have to take the chance and just do it and said of sit there and expect it to fall in your lap. I took charge of my life and am now seeing the results of all my hard work. There are definitely some challenges you will face being younger, especially when it comes to being a landlord, no matter how professional you are if you look like you can be your tenants grandchild it makes it tough for them to respect you, but there is always an answer to a problem you just have to get creative with any situation.

Neither. I only put A/C where it already is if it's a rental. 

Evening all,

Looking to put a bid on a potential flip. It has cabinets that are in really great shape, would like to use them if at all possible. Thinking of painting them. Have any of you had a good experience reusing or painting the cabinets on a flip.

@Sylvia B. lol my point exactly!

@Tony SanFilippo From talking to other investors in other areas it would appear that all section 8 locations are different. Some follow the HUD guidelines to the T. Others go above and beyond and make up their own rules. I have had decent luck with the tenants so far..other then later water bills and random things getting broken pretty smooth.

@Bill Paesano the only thing I have heard about mulit's with section 8, and this came from the housing authority is that it is hard to determine what the rent should be. So I wouldn't be much help there as I stay away from multi's. What I can tell you is get in touch with your local authority and they should be be able to get you a standard list of what they are going to look for, it will help but won't give you all the answers. Benefits are the money being on time and the fact you can leverage that if they don't keep up on the place you will have their voucher taken away, other then that not much different then any other rental.

Hello All!

I write this post to hopefully give someone the strength to not give up and keep on going, even if you fail sometimes it's not the end you just need to look on the bright side of things and keep on pushing. Failing an inspection may not be a huge deal to some people but to me it is a huge deal because I do all the work myself, when a property fails, I feel as if I have failed. This post can be applied to all aspects of getting shot down and getting back up on your feet. Even if it helps just one person, then writing this was worth my time.

In my time as an investor I always run into people who solely will not do section 8 or stopped doing section 8 not because of the tenants, but because of the dreaded inspections. I always felt that was quite a silly reason not to take up the advantages of the program, until recently.

At the beginning of working with the program I had no problems passing, passed the first time every time. Lately however, I have failed 2 initials and 1 annual. It really started to grind on me. Failing an annual in my opinion is not nearly as bad as failing an initial, reason being is TIME. Some places do it different but in Baltimore you have to get the inspection done AFTER you have found a tenant not before and to boot it takes about two weeks for the inspector to come out once the voucher is turned in. For example: I had my future tenant turn in her voucher on the 22nd of June, I called up to see when they had scheduled it, they kicked back "looks like the inspection will be on July 8th".....uhhhh what??? Thankfully, I pressed on them and they magically appeared to pull an open date out of thing air, so they moved it to June 28th...much better. However, If you so happen to fail the inspection, it is again most likely going to be another two weeks. So as you can see that is over a whole months rent you may have had if you had not gone the section 8 route having to jump through the loops of the inspections. So I get where people can get frustrated.

Failing for things that are dangerous in nature I understand, but when there are things on the list like needs to replace toilet seat....needs to paint exterior door two different shades....needs to install CO detector on second floor (which there was) cut grass in back yard (he was referring to the grass outside my property line...) Bathroom door drags when opening (the wood expanded due to the heat)...I can again understand the frustration.

But I like to look on the bright side of things, and while the inspection process can be a PITA I do find that with every inspection I add more and more things to keep and eye on to pass the next one. 

Also I have found that the re-inspections are a joke. They only come in to look at the stuff they got you for in the initial, in and out in less then 3 minutes and some of the things they do not even check. I wonder sometimes if they write down petty stuff just so they have another inspection to come and get paid for.

Needless to say I did just pass the re-inspection, granted my scheduled time was from 9am to 11am the inspector did not show up to 11:47am which added salt to the wound but was subsided with the news of passing. 

Putting all the negativity aside (as I try to stay positive) I find that there can be pros to the inspections. It keeps me on my toes, it doesn't let me slip as far as standards go. I not only have to please a tenant I also have to please an inspector who knows some of the codes more or less. It keeps my values in check and helps me stay on track of not turning into a slum lord, because after doing a few of these low income proprieties I can see how it is a very easy pit to fall into. Why the inspections are annoying sometimes they are challenging and I never turn down a good challenge.

So the moral of this story is, that even if you are feeling down and at the moment you may feel like you have failed, you need to keep your head up and keep pressing on. No matter what happens in life there is always a positive to pull from a negative situation.

Now to wait for the housing authority to tell me what they are going to give me for rent!

Tariq