All Forum Posts by: Ben Riechmann

There is great truth to what John says Jeff.  You don't want to spread yourself out to much especially in the begining!  It is great to become expert in one area before moving on to any others.  

Auctions can be tricky in that a lot of time people do bid properties above what a place is worth, especially if there is work to be done on the place and they have not done work on a propery in awhile and don't realize how much building costs have gone up.  There are times you can buy a property before auction but not always, as auctioneers make a lot of money off the people that bid over the price they should.  It is awesome that you have a partner that is a contractor as he can look at places and know roughly how much different things will cost to fix.  If he is also investing, that means he is also putting in skin in the game so that hopefully means you can trust his calls even more.  Most of the time, most us veterans go to auctions and leave with things from the property the owner owned inside that we got cheap like tools and not properties and not the properties due to the bidding.  Like everywhere if you keep looking for deals you will come across some, so it is good to look and if you are going to bid know the most a place is worth to bid on for it to be a good deal.

The important thing is to always be looking for deals in the area you choose and not to kick yourself over the one you misssed or one that didn't go as good as you hoped.  Learn from those things and move on as there are more deals out there!  Even in this hot market there are deals to be found.  The great thing about real estate is there often is more than one way to get a deal done or sell a property.  The benefits of them are numerous as well over stocks.  I invest in both.

Welcome to Bigger Pockets!  It sounds like you have some good foundation work for making some good deals.  There are some good videos on here that are helpful and BP videos you can catch on youtube to catch ones you missed.  There are a lot of helpful people here too, that can offer guidence for different investment ideas or issues. 

In some of our buildings in Cleveland Heights when it comes to up and down stairs issues, many of the units have wood floors or tiles.  There is a section in the lease that the floors need to be covered 70%.  Meaning put down rugs or other type things to help with noise if an issue.  As for walls, it is true that unless you have access to the inner wall, it does become hard to muffle sound in between them.  Inbetween tenants if you have issues you can put insulation in between inner walls where you may not normally put insulaltion and that does make a huge difference in sound levels. In one of my offices I did that and it does help out a lot to keep sound in the office and any sound out of it out.  Double layering the drywall may or may not help depending on the structure of the place for a cheap fix.  It will definatly help some if done on both sides of an inner wall of both apartments.  The inside of the wall will be an issue if it is the real issue.  

Sometimes though, some tenants are more bothered by noises than others. So also if it has not been a problem before or yet, something for white noise for the tenant so they are not bothered by the other tenants may also be a good solution, assuming the other tenants also are not making noise out the ordinary.  I hope you found some of that helpful Taylor.

I find that you always need to be looking.  There are always deals to be had especially if you open your mind up to the fact that there are also many different ways to have deal done and different sellers wanting to sell property that might be interested in selling different ways.  It may take more leg work sometimes to find deals in a hot market, but sometimes you stumble on some great ones as people aren't looking or trying to make them happen as they assume there are none due to a hot market.  I invest in both real estate and stocks.  Why I love real estate more, is there is so much more you can do with it and ways you can get into it.  Always do your due diligence to make sure you are not getting yourself into a bad deal, but there are really great ones out there still.  

At least in some of the states I check out there does seem to be a slowing trend of the hot real estate sellers market.  It is still a lot hotter than any I have seen in awhile, although I see most of it effect people buying single family homes they are going to live in this year still.  Then again, there have been some big multifamily with low cap levels I did not expect to move this year at their asking price.  Its still a lot less crazy than 2020.  I have seen deals then and see even more this year.  You just have to always be looking and if you see something good, always think of multiple ways to make it happen even if you have one simple way to make it work.  Its good to always have your mind working on developing strategies for when you don't have an easy way.

It is important to know all who will be on a lease.  Sometimes people will know their partner has something that does will not pass a background check or credit check.  Maybe a criminal past.  The extra due diligence is worth it.  This keeps you from having headaches down the road.  I drive to where they live now.  If they own a business I drive by that.  The more time you talk to check things out now the less likely you are to have problems later on.  If she lied about who the person was with her, to me that is a major red flag and makes me wonder what issues you might have trouble trusting her on in the future if you rent to her even if he doesn't live there.  We are not in the go by your gut business.  We are in the do a great screening to eliminate the chance you will have a headache later on business.  Do applications with credit checks, criminal backgrounds, and evictions.  If you like them but they are on the line ask for a co-signer or extra months rent.  Make sure that whatever process you have for screening tenants you do the same for everyone no matter who it is.  So it is good to write up what your business system for screening tenants is if you have one rental or 150.  That way also, if it ever comes into question you can show you always go by the same system.

It used to be easy where I lived to do that Samantha to get that kind of HELOC over multiple properties. Is your bank only local? Maybe I should try more community-oriented banks.

Rock on Paula!  Way to go!

Really cool find! I love the bedrock part!

I have been talking to some locals and out of staters that have been interested in the area around Cleveland Heights.  On Loopnet someone is selling a mix of multifamilies for just under 2 million on Loopnet if you were looking to buy a bigger group all at once.  If you are willing and have the financing to buy them all at once you may be able to get them for less.  I have seen this happen.  They are mostly spread around Cleveland, University, and Shaker Heights areas.  All in the Heights areas.  It's a good way to get a group all at once that a property management group could help you manage.

I have all kinds of different deals with contractors and the percentage when that is done often also depends if there is a property management team involved as well.  If you have a property management team involved as well then a percentage may cut into your bottom line a lot.  So it sort of depends on how you have your team set up and what you are going for.  I had investors that didn't have property managers that did have contractors that had a point guy they gave a percentage to.  A big if factor for contractors is if and when they are going to get paid, so I like to pay them the day of work done so they know they will get paid by me in a timely manner and bonus if they do something that is above and beyond.  That way if they need to decide to come and do work for me or somewhere else, they know I am the sure thing.  I also let them know I give a finders fee for deals they find me and will track them down to reward them for this.  I also give rental referral bonuses to people that bring me, renters, I end up renting to.  Even if they don't want the bonus I make sure they get it one way or another. I end up having people bringing people to me for rentals and telling me about deals to check out.

For yourself and where you are, you would have to find out where you are at and what you are comfortable with.  I also don't want to suggest a percentage that worked for one investor that may not work for you as they may do business different from you.  Thank you for the tip on zillow!

I had one guy I had never had trouble with before Julie where I got burned.  I gave him money to pick up a 5-gallon bucket of paint at Sherwin Williams.  He dropped off a bucket that did not have the normal printout top we got from them.  I and another guy that were also painting the house thought that was really weird.  We opened it up and the smell just about knocked us over.  We quickly opened windows, and I was really really cold out and opened doors to try and get the smell out.  When we got the smell taken care of I asked my friend how does paint gets to smell that bad.  He said the guy most likely had kept the money and given a 5-gallon bucket of paint he had left out over the winter.  Paint will end up smelling that bad if not kept in a place where the temperature is not within a certain range.  I called him and said he could either repay me the money he used and I would give him more work in the future as I would be giving him a second chance or he could just be fired.  He chose to be fired.  He lost out of tons of future work.  It pays to be a good business person as I didn't have so many rentals then, but I have a whole lot now.   He asked if I could work for me again years later and I laughed.