All Forum Posts by: Leigh Ann Smith

Hi, @Gary Ennis, I'm jumping back into an old conversation.  We are putting in a vacation rental in an unincorporated area of our county, so there will be no city taxes.  Would the state of Texas hotel tax be in lieu of sales tax?  

I also wondered if you have an update on how your property is doing after the long, hot Austin summer.  Are you getting bookings related to UT events like football games?

@Kelly B., I am also very interested to know about the claims service these companies provide.  Bumping this to see if there's someone out there who knows something!

@Brionne Moss, read up on the flood zone thing, because it's a big deal to potential investors.  My husband and I won't touch a property that's in Zone A or Zone AE.  A cracked foundation is not a deal-breaker, but a flood zone is.  Cracked slabs are not too awfully expensive to fix unless there are cast iron pipes that have broken and rusted, termites, or big issues like that.  That's what a foundation guy told me anyway.  He also said that houses newer than 1975 usually have PVC pipes, not cast iron, and that's better.  But, as @Sandra Gibson said, that cracked slab makes the house worth a lot less, and the seller knows that.  

@Belinda Lopez, do you have to be a member of RICH to attend?  Are there guest speakers or is it a networking/chatting time.

@Derek A., Houston doesn't have the density of small multi-families that some other cities have.  I think it might be because land was always relatively cheap here.  Development just kept heading further out of town.  @Iman Yu is right that many of them are in the lower income neighborhoods.  

One way to assess the neighborhood from a distance is to look up the ratings of the schools nearest to the property you're considering.  It's not a foolproof method of evaluating neighborhoods, but it's a place to start.

Hi @Lawrence Taylor, I'm glad you decided to jump in with a question!  Whether the market is saturated or not, I do not know, but to me (also a newbie investor) it sure seems that way.

Have you been listening to the BP podcasts?  One of the things that caught my ear recently was a suggestion to look up eviction records, then contact the owners of those homes to see if they are interested in selling.  Maybe the owner is fed up with landlording after evicting a tenant and would be willing to talk.

I am also researching this subject. We have a self-directed IRA that holds 1 piece of property (undeveloped land), and I think the fee ($375/year) is too high. We are not interacting with this account at all, and the land is just sitting there. So, I'll be watching for recommendations and doing some more looking on the forums.

@Jeff Caravalho, to do the @ thing, start typing the name after the @, then look just below the message box.  The person's name will pop up. Click on it, and they will be tagged in the post.  You can only tag people who have commented on that post or who are your BP colleagues.

@Joseph Weisenbloom, when looking on AirBNB for properties, did you focus on ones close to where you'll be working, or did you use a larger radius?  We are preparing a tiny house vacation rental, but since we are about 20 miles south of Houston, I doubt we'd be able to draw in a business traveler.

@Jimmy Moncrief, we did not really look at composting toilets.  For one thing, the tiny house we purchased already had a regular flush toilet installed.  Also, since we are using it as a vacation rental, we think guests might not adjust to that too well.  :-)

Since we have an LLC for the REI business, would it provide any protection if we survey out the parcel of land on which the cabins will sit and have the LLC lease the property from us?

I would imagine that we'd have the normal difficulties with truly keeping the LLC separate from ourselves and having it provide any legal protection.

I'm fine with keeping it as one business and upping our liability insurance if it would help us obtain financing for REI.