All Forum Posts by: Matthew L.

@Trevor Ewen sounds almost exactly like what I've been thinking of doing. Philly seems like a great option for us New Yorkers. The prices and cap rates are so much better than NYC and it's under a 2 hour drive so it's doable to go look at properties on the weekends. I've been focusing my search on multi-families around Temple University, UPenn and Drexel as they look like they cash flow pretty well but I need to get down there check out the neighborhoods soon, possibly this weekend. I'm also just starting to do some research on if SFH flips make sense there; there are a lot of sub-$100k properties available but I'm not sure if the neighborhoods they're in are suitable for flips.

Good luck with your search and keep us updated!

Welcome! Does your college offer any real estate courses? If so I would definitely think hard about taking those instead of an online course.

Sounds great. I will be there.

I bank with Chase so my tenants pay me via Chase Quickpay. I also gave them the option to pay with Venmo or Amazon payments. Makes my life much easier.

Thank you all! I guess I'll be waiting until I move.

I want to get my real estate license but I'm not sure whether it makes more sense to do it before or after moving to a different state. I currently live in New York and am hoping to move elsewhere by the end of the year; I have not decided where yet. I would rather do it sooner than later but don't want to waste time and money if I'm going to have to repeat anything after moving. I know some states have reciprocity laws, is it generally pretty easy to get licensed in another state if I were licensed in NY?

Thanks all! I'm going to just have a local company install it. I don't know the tenant's technical knowledge and think it's best to just have it done the right way.

My tenants in my Atlanta condo pay all the utilities. They recently asked me if I could have a programmable thermostat installed before the summer so that they do not have to come home to a hot apartment as they (understandably) do not want to run the A/C all day while at work. I didn't even think about asking them to pay for the unit but another landlord I was talking to said he would absolutely have them pay since the unit in the apartment works fine and a new unit will save them on utility costs. I'm inclined to pay for it myself since I'm all about energy efficiency and they are perfect tenants who I want to keep happy and hope they extend their lease. Are there any hard rules you follow in this situation or is it a case by case basis depending on the tenant?

Related to that, can anyone recommend a reliable handyman or company in Atlanta that installs programmable thermostats as I live in NY.

Thanks!

Congrats on the first project! This is pretty much the strategy I'm looking to implement, except I'm probably going to be paying cash for a house in the $30-50k range to save on the loan costs, then do a cash out refi after reno.

How did you find a contractor and did you design the reno yourself?

@Frank Scala I didn't really do any complex financial calculations, I sort of just jumped into it. The only thing I did was calculate what my estimated total monthly expenses would be and what the market rents were, and since rents were about $300-400 more than my expenses would be I went for it! I'm definitely going to be doing a more detailed analysis on future properties.