James Vermillion, Wasn't really a hurry, i read many good books that gave me good insight into the process, then purchased all of the Nolo books for California to learn about the law. Created spreadsheets to help assess property opportunities quickly, found a good real estate agent, got my feet wet by putting in offers, worked to find people to fix up items in properties to build a network. Talked to CPA's and lawyers about pitfalls i should avoid and how to set everything up properly. Got a great interest rate of 4% for Non owner occupied multi family. A lot of work and research went into this process.
As far as major issues, oh boy... Since this is my first time, i have definitely made some mistakes and had issues. I only closed on the properties near Christmas and had 1 person moving out, so had to get that unit set up and re-rented, luckily that happened quickly and was able to turn it around and have it rented with increased rent within a week.
Had another person not paying rent, so had to constantly show up and knock his door, which he avoided like the plague. And speaking of plague, once i got him out with the help of the previous owner, the place was a pig sty with 10,000+ cockroaches and utter filth. I hired some people to clean the place out since i didn't want to touch it and ran pest control around the whole property to ensure the infestation didn't spread to other units as we fumigate, bomb and soak everything down. Then had to clean everything up, replace a lot of broken stuff. Had the unit rented before we even started the clean up process, luckily this area has a very high rental population as its mostly low income housing.
Had a lawyer i met with try to charge me for services not rendered, wrote him a few polite questioning mails and he stopped pestering me to pay for my free 1 hour consultation.
Had clogged main lines from 2 unites that were sending the refuse back into the house through the sinks.. that was messy. My guess is they were flushing things they should not have. I threatened to have them evicted if they couldn't stop putting stuff in the toilets, amazingly, no problems since then, just hope that was the actual issue and not something more severe.
Right now, all 8 units are rented. Still have one problem tenant who does not pay regularly and who's back yard area is packed with extra stuff, washers, dryers etc and has a large tarp over his area, which is against the city codes, but i cannot get him to stop. Contemplating getting this family out, but he does pay every month, even though its a bit late, so not completely worried but keeping an eye out.
Brandon Turner, Lessons learned, hmm.
1) Make sure you have a team of people who are willing to come to work as soon as possible. When issues arise, you need to get them fixed as soon as possible without waiting for the issues to get worse!
2) Make sure you are knowledgeable in the eviction process and tenant rights, you don't want to step all over those.
3) Make sure you have people you can ask questions on for situations you don't have an idea on how to handle. (this forum is quickly becoming my go to place for finding answers, kudos BP!)
I'm sure more will come, as i've only had the properties a month :)
The previous owner used a lady and her husband to manage his properties, he taught her many years ago to collect rent and deal with small issues. I pay her to find people for me as she's lived in the area for 12 years and to collect rent. Her husband is a contractor, so he deals with many small issues i have no idea how to deal with. But i am always there learning what he's doing, because if i'm going to grow my RE business, i need to understand what needs to be done so i won't be led down the wrong track in the future.
