All Forum Posts by: Tim McKinnon

@Matthew Daly how did this work out for you? Have a family friend coming in to town for a 6 week rotation and we’re not sure if we need to do a lease and background check. Wondering what you ended up doing for your rotation renters? Thank you for any insight!

Thanks for the advice everyone!  I feel a lot more comfortable knowing the 20k might be on the very high end.  We did buy the house off market so we're wondering if there is any recourse we might be able to pursue.  We're just disappointed we didn't catch this during the course of our inspection but lesson learned and we'll be sure to have an electrician stop by during the due diligence period, especially on older houses.  Any other tradesmen you all have on your must inspect before buying list, like plumbers/hvac or anything like that?  

For us, it appears that the lower had a lot of updated electrical in the outlets but the switches and fixtures did not get updated at all. Then upstairs seems to be a bit more of a mess with some done and others not but no rhyme and reason to it. We're hoping the work can all be done fishing the wire through the walls and then through the ceiling/attic of each unit. Just need to drywall the holes once they get done. Fun start to our first investment but hopefully this will just help lower our CapEx going forward. Gives us a good story to look back on too.

Thanks again for all the help!  It's great to have the knowledge and support of this community when we run into problems like this.  

 

Hi Everyone,
My wife and I recently bought a duplex and during the buying process we specifically asked a number of times about knob and tube in the house and were promised that there was none active in the house.  We went back and forth on this numerous times because we knew it would be hard to get it insured with active K&T, and we were told repeatedly that there was none active. You probably know where this is going. 

So we had an electrician stop by and it looks like they updated the easy stuff – some outlets and switches but didn't update a lot of the more tedious areas, and we have a pretty big rewire job coming.  We got a quote of 20k for the work and are in the process of getting more, but this number seems a little high to us. I am just wondering if anyone has had any experience with getting their home partially rewired, and wouldn’t mind giving a ballpark of what it cost them?  We're located in SE Wisconsin and the house is a up/down duplex about 2900 sq ft.  

Thank you for any help!
Tim

Hi Everyone,

So tomorrow we’re going through our first walk through in the city we’re looking to invest and it’s one of the few multi family properties that actually make financial sense in our market. I’m wondering as a first time investor, and home buyer, is there any advice to finding a good deal besides searching the mls using a realtor or Redfin? Seems to be a good amount of properties in our market, Kenosha Wisconsin, but nothing that will make the return we’re hoping to make. I know our first one is mostly about getting experience but if we could make maybe 100/door that’d be great. Just wonder what I could do to find that deal or create that deal beyond searching listings as they become available.

Thank you!

Tim

Looking at a property tomorrow where gas and water are currently the landlord’s responsibility with other utilities paid by the tenant. Just wondering what options there are to put that back on the renters? I’ve heard of tenant bill back and sub metering for water but are there other options?

Thank you for any help!

@Brock Mogensen just wondering what your thoughts are on the market in general up there right now?  My wife and I are looking to hopefully buy 2 multis, 1 to hack and 1 to hold, in the coming months up there and I'm just trying to get more info on the market.  Thank you for pointing out the investor group too, that looks to be a great option too to learn more about opportunities Kenosha!  Any recommendations on good realtors too? 

Thank you everyone for the insight!  

@Jason Ericksen we are actually looking to begin our quest in Wisconsin so if you have any advice for LLC formations within Wisconsin that'd be fantastic! We're looking at the Kenosha area for now since we currently work in Chicago, for now, and they have a Metra stop there.

@Alan E. We're looking to buy 2 multi's, 1 with an FHA/Home Possible to live in and the other with a conventional mortgage. My understanding is since the LLC would be relatively new it would be pretty hard to get a loan through it without any/minimal financial history. However we haven't talked to any banks yet or formed the LLC for that matter, so I should talk to a few banks to see what our options are.

@Stanley Bronstein thank you for the advice!  I know forming that network of trusted advisors will be one of the hardest things we do.  We're definitely hoping to get this right the first time so we don't have to pay even more to clean up any potential mess later.

@David H. When you formed it on your own did you use a something like LegalZoom?  Also, did you try anything interesting like forming it within a different state?  I've been reading "Start Your Own Corporation" from the Rich Dad Advisor series and they mentioned ideally forming the company within Nevada since they have the most friendly laws and was wondering if you might've tried anything like that.

Thanks again everyone for your time and advice!

Hi Everyone, My wife and I are looking to begin our real estate adventure over the next few months in multi family homes . One thing I keep wondering about is if we should for an LLC or a corporation of some sort to protect our personal assets. I know we can’t get a mortgage through the company initially but I was wondering if we could buy it on our own and transfer it to whatever company we start up, if we start one up. Moral of the story looking for advice on if we should set up an LLC or something similar? Additionally how do you transfer your properties to the company once you purchase the properties? Thank you for any insight! Tim