All Forum Posts by: Jeff G.

Hello All,

Most states have have web accessible property databases at the city or county level. I'm coming up empty when looking for anything of the sort in the state of NJ. Also, no luck on getting access to foreclosures, evictions or probates either. It seems that everything I find is pay walled behind a third party.

Are there sites I'm just not aware of? Do I have to make paid requests directly to certain agencies and get a CD / USB in the mail? Bear in mind NJ is quite a hike for me, so physically going to NJ on a regular basis to request records would be impractical.

I have my eyes on some smaller multifamily units. With residential 3/4 unit complexes it's not hard to find properties that all have 2+ bedrooms. The problem is for the small apartment complexes, say a 10-12 units, are often have a large number of 1 bedroom units with perhaps a token number of 2 bedroom units. 

I'm really reticent to pick up a property that has more than an incidental 1 bedroom here or there. My perception is that this tenant pool is simply the lowest tier of whatever market the complex happens to be in. I expect turnover to be high no matter what I do. I'm open to the possibility I might be wrong though.

What are some good options to find and keep good quality tenants in 1 bedroom units in most markets? 

I have heard some landlords say that as part of their eviction procedure they keep a packet full of contact information for private / government programs that help tenants meet their rental needs during short periods of financial difficulty. For those of you who use this strategy as a stop-gap to keep turnover low, what what organizations are you normally putting tenants in contact with? How helpful is this approach with retention?

@Christian Hutchinson, okay, it sounds like some areas have changed a bit.

I have two questions: One, what's driving the growth? Second, is the growth in any way artificial through subsidy or tax breaks?

@Account Closed in addition to whatever insurance you get you may want to pick up a Simplisafe alarm. It is like old school alarm systems except it's portable, reconfigurable, and works over cellular bands. They're really not that expensive. Also, doubling that up with Ring Central which has a motion activated camera / light that ties into your smart phone could go a long way toward making your property a less attractive target to copper thieves and other vandals.

I hope there is a special place in Hell just for copper thieves.

@Thomas Patterson good to know. It's a university town, so that isn't a surprise.

@Christian Hutchinson, look I haven't lived in Detroit in years. (I think I made that clear in my post, but maybe not. Those examples were taken from what I remember during the crash. You may be right to call them out as dated (except perhaps Ann Arbor... I still hear hear of deals there along with Lake Orion on occasion) but it wasn't "BS" in that I wasn't attempting to be deceptive of misleading.

My point was that Detroit, like Flint, has systemic problems that are beyond all hope and no amount of external intervention can save it from itself. I don't intend to put my money there.

If you think I'm wrong, I'd love to hear why and what areas you think are actually worth investing in. We don't have to agree with each other to profit from an honest debate on the matter.

@Rebekah Keller, I would not personally invest $50,000 in Detroit. I have lived in both Flint and the Detroit metro area and, as the saying goes "they're a good place to be from and not a good place to be."

The problem is that Detroit's literacy rate is abysmal. I don't mean computer literacy, I mean words on printed page literacy. If you are only able to read at a 3rd grade level your chances for job prospects and therefore economic prosperity generally are abysmal.

There are entire blocks where no one has a job. No one knows anyone who has had a job in their lifetime and no one's parents (or possibly even grandparents) ever had a job. I'm not making this up. So, this limits the most basic of social capital to near zero. If you don't know how to dress for an interview and how to act in a professional setting, you can't get a job.

Those with work histories are predominantly ex-UAW folks. Now, there is nothing wrong with making an honest living by manufacturing cars. The problem is Union-Think. What is Union-Think? Simply put it's the notion that if I assert myself I'm "taking jobs away from someone else." That mentality is baked into the culture in both Flint and Detroit in so many places it's not funny.

So, if your population can't read, has no idea what professional behavior looks like, and has a cultural aversion to working harder than the other guy (lest you take his job) you aren't left with much. That's not even factoring in the large numbers of persons with violent felonies and drug histories that would be "challenged" in finding employment in any situation.

Now there are these things called renaissance zones, or at least there were when I lived in Metro Detroit. What are those? Those are areas where business activity is tax free. Those areas are booming in a lot of ways. The problem is it's all artificial. When the tax burden returns to those areas you'll see a slump in economic growth and available employment. There is no real way to predict what that transition will look like, it could be mild or it could be very bad.

All of that said, if you can find a cheap apartment complex in an area that isn't dominated by high crime (good luck) and don't mind dealing with the drama that is low income tenants you might not do too bad. The problem is, that's the exception, not the rule. 

Just for illustration purposes. Go spend some time on 8 Mile on the Southfield-Detroit line. You'll see relative prosperity in Southfield. When you hit 8 Mile you'll see everything turn to crud.

You're much better putting your money into a city outside of Detroit, like Southfield, Ann Arbor, or maybe even Troy.

@Ben Kirchner before and after pictures are essential for this sort of thing. Going forward, take photos of the place before the tenant moves in, show them to the tenant and have them initial them... and include language in your lease that says the lawyer speak equivalent of "this is the condition I found the place in when I moved in... and this is the condition it will be in when I leave, less normal wear and tear." 

In an identical future case, this could establish the presence of the appliances before and their absence after a tenant moves out.

I'm in agreement with other posters here... go after the ex-tenant in civil court (yeah, theft is a crime... yeah, it sounds like your cops are lazy... it could be worse) but as others have pointed out it's much easier to obtain a judgement in civil court. 

BTW, try searching Craigslist for your appliances, you might find the old listing with enough visual context to show it is clearly your rental the unit was photographed in. It's not much, but it might help. Good luck.

I haven't pushed hard at connecting with lawyers for deals, @Matt Geerts. I have gotten several leads from a few lawyers but, as it happens, nothing that turned into a deal. These were connections made by chance, not intentional network-building. I think I'd have better results if I put serious effort into it.

@Matt Geerts, I can't point to statistics to prove it statistically, but if I only had to rely on one referral method it would be lawyers. There will always be marriages and therefore a certain percentage of those will end in divorce. People will always kick the bucket and leave property behind to get sorted out in probate. So, really, my gut says start there with the lawyers.

Do you have any thoughts on the specific networking strategies you're going to employ?