All Forum Posts by: Tim S.

".........better luck making a deal with?", no it's irrelevant.   See above

@Jess Kinzel a quick Google search will provide detailed information

Most will do a walk through once or twice a year.  They should do it anytime you request, you'll have to pay for it though.  It's not their job to make sure the tenants aren't slobs though.  They are paid to find tenants, collect the rent, fix things when it breaks.  You can't expect them to police how people live inside the property.  

But they were gone for 3 months and the PM didn't take any action?  That is a big problem.  When the rent stopped coming in they should have taken action.  What did you do when the rent stopped coming in?  

I agree, I paid for Rentometer, waste of money.  Zillow is better for rental rates. 

$100 is a joke, I'd want at least $500.  Totally disagree with the small claims court idea for something like this.  When people make reasonable requests of me as a landlord, I'll be reasonable with them.  When people make unreasonable or petty requests, I'm not going to be very accommodating. 

Many questions answered here:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/491641-nearing-1-000-college-student-tenants-heres-what-ive-learned

@Valenda D. Yes, CDF was a typo, meant CFD. I don't think they are all that scary, conceptually it's pretty simple. For me it's just that they are almost always for very low end junk houses in sketchy areas. That makes them too risky for me, I know some people are making money with them.

As far as LLC's go, there is a lot of conflicting information, I don't know what to think anymore. Mine is TX, it's cheap, still have to pay CA $800 no matter what, but the TX side of the cost equation is cheap. I used to have a NV LLC, but they have become quite expensive. My understanding is that CA LLC's offer weak protection, again there is a lot of conflicting information on this.

It depends how your property is set up, and what's typical for the market. I have a 6br SFR, there is one meter for the house, they are responsible for paying the utilities directly to the providers. It's up to them how they split it up, I think they just divide it up evenly.

If "utilities included" is normal for your market, then you should do the same.  Set it up so they are incentivized to be frugal with the energy.  If they get unlimited energy for a flat price, they will abuse it and run up huge bills.  

@Valenda D.

I wasn't saying you don't need an LLC, the point was it's doesn't need to be your top priority, and you shouldn't get bogged down by that issue. Yes, when buying notes it should be in an LLC to keep your personal name out of the public records. Depending on how the JV deal is set up, may not need the LLC.

Yield on performing notes has been coming down, 10% is possible still I think, hard to get much more.

To invest in NPN's, 1st position, I'd say you need at least $25k-30k. Anything less, you'll be buying low value assets in high risk areas. CDF's are cheaper.

I'd suggest starting out buying a partial with someone trustworthy, invest in a fund, or doing a JV deal. Make sure you vet the person you are investing with very carefully. Chris S. would be a good choice.

I think you are putting the cart before the horse with all of your LLC entity structure concerns. First you need to figure out how note investing works, and what you want to do IRT to notes. The LLC stuff can wait. You don't have to have an LLC to invest in notes. The main reason is to keep your personal name off of recorded documents. That can be done pretty inexpensively BTW. Also it's $800/yr for each CA LLC, not $600. If you want to start a notes business you are going to need more money to get started. You should do some investing in notes first, before thinking about starting a notes business. There is an awful lot to know, and there is no one place to learn it, it mostly comes with experience.

Regarding the So Bay Area Notes meetup, I used to go to that hoping that it would be useful, but I found it to be a waste of time. The same people usually show up, they all seem to be tire kickers that never actually invest in notes, there was rarely any useful knowledge presented. kind of a joke.  I know there is a new lady running it now, maybe it's better?  I doubt it though. 

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