All Forum Posts by: Tony Kohnle

Originally posted by @James Wise:

Originally posted by @Tony Kohnle:

Do you have any Student housing in your portfolio? They could be a good source for your next round of photos. I worked for a big property manager when I was in school and remember a few doozies.

 We do! Students are actually pretty great tenants. I just filmed a video answering a question like this recently as a matter of fact. Ya see the college kids are controllable. Do they make mistakes? Yes. But when they do you can get them to pay for those mistakes pretty easily. Where as a tenant from hell has accepted their station in life as a tenant from hell & you are pretty much SOL when it comes to getting anything out of them.

 I'll have to check out the video. I'm sure it will be good. Most of the students I dealt with were pretty responsible and just put in the wear and tear you would expect from people new to being adults. A few made up for it though. I remember one of the managers taking the appraiser to a unit that had just been built and the tenants had been in for 3 days. And finding ever room trashed. Broken doors, head and shoulder shaped dents/holes in walls, cigarette burns on counters, iron shapes melted into the carpet, cracked toilets, etc. it had to have been one hell of a party.

Do you have any Student housing in your portfolio? They could be a good source for your next round of photos. I worked for a big property manager when I was in school and remember a few doozies.

Thanks James, the newbies need to see that. My response though was "Meh" you just can't convey the whole impact without the smell. I had a residential appraisal business in the Cleveland Metro area for a decade and survived the foreclosure crisis doing foreclosures. If you get there before the trash out crew, lots of them looked like this. Out in the suburbs too, not just in the inner city.

Lots of angles to address here. I'll hit the trust one for you. I have been an Appraiser for 25 years, both residential and commercial, and for banks, lawyers, and taxing authority's. In my experience about 5% of the people in the world will lie to your face and double down on it when called on it. Another 5 to 10% are very aggressive in trying to make the world see things in a light that is most favorable to them. The rest are just try to do their best within the rules to be good, successful, people. 

This is true in Real Estate as well. Despite what you've heard, Real Estate investing is risky and requires a lot of knowledge in broad areas to be successful. 

 Like any other area, the unethical tend to gravitate toward the less knowledgeable because they are easier to take advantage of. Be careful as you gain experience however,to not assume that just because 2 people have different numbers or results, that 1 is trying to cheat you. Every deal is different and everyone has different expenses, skill levels, and expectations.