All Forum Posts by: Troy DeLong

@David Thomasma Hey David, pleasure to meet you. Sounds like you two were busting butt last year! 

I'm an agent / investor / contractor out of the Lansing area. You should tag along to the monthly REI meetups in Lansing. I'll shoot you the details.

- Troy 

Hey Sonny, 

The Waverly area has a Lansing address, but is under the jurisdiction of Delta Township. Also, Delta Township is within EATON County, whereas the City of Lansing is within INGHAM County. Eaton County is a little nicer to landlords. 

Delta Township does have a Rental Code Compliance department and does inspections every three (3) years with fees to go with it. As far as 'Landlord Friendly', I would say that you would have no problem here as long as your properties are kept up and in working order. 

I'm a local investor / agent in the area so let me know if there is anything else you may need help with. 

- Troy 

@Jay Scott It's good that you've got the gears turning in your head. Without putting too much thought into this, my 'thousand foot aerial view' is this....

It sounds like you are in an expensive / higher end location outside of Seattle. What is keeping you there? Jobs? Family? Schools? 

For that size house for just four people (Wife, two younger kids and you), it sounds like a lot and could be a good opportunity to downsize. Are there more reasonably priced areas in your region that you and the family could downsize too? 

I believe HELOCs are great when...
A) Rates are decent 
B) You have plenty of equity to get you a decent pile of cash to play with 
C) You would like to stay in your house / keep the property long term. 

For your situation, I would lean toward selling your house on-market, cashing out, moving to another region where the housing is more affordable than +$1million dollar appraised homes, pay cash for your new home, then with the leftover cash, buy one rental and see how it works out for you. 

Paying cash allows you to negotiate better on the property and is more enticing to sellers. But you need to make sure you and your agent are confident you're not overpaying.

Now, all that being said, I also think it would be a great idea to do some value add projects to the properties (Personal residence and rental property) and do cash-out-refinances on the buildings when rates become more favorable and you're up and running with the rental. Rinse, repeat for another property. 

All that said, this is just my OPINION without diving too deep into your situation. Best of luck! 

- Troy 
 

@Rowan Gratz What Chris said above. 

Without all the details, I'll bet that those loans you mentioned (SBA & credit card) are personally guaranteed by your friend, the restaurant owner. 

Sell the "valuable real estate" to help offset the business debts while he tries to sell the business. I foresee him losing that battle if he tries to "protect" his real estate from being touched during his bankruptcy proceedings. 

@David Coric This similarly happened at one of our multi-units as well. Our Triplex had two vacant units upstairs with the lower unit occupied. During our remodel, one of the units kept smelling like weed, even after new flooring, cabinets, trim, paint, etc. Near the end of the remodel, we hired a company to professionally clean the ducts. In the smelly unit, the duct cleaning guys found wax cartridges for a weed vape pen in the living room duct. So when the furnace would kick on and heat up, so would these old wax cartridges. 

After the duct got cleaned, the smell went 90% away. 

Hey Rick, 

I'm an agent / investor / contractor in the Lansing, MI market. Just sent you a DM. 

- Troy 

@Amy Oltendorf This whole discussion would be worth $200 - $400 to have an hour chat with a local Real Estate attorney by you. Especially if you would like to collect thousands of dollars in damages from your tenants. All of the advice on here is great, but this definitely involves too much local / state law for BP members to give you the perfect path to take. You could definitely put yourself in a legal battle if you start "forcing" your tenants to pay damages. 

Once it's taken care of though, I agree with most people above. Politely part ways with these tenants... 

@TJ Harback Hey TJ. I'm in the Lansing area as well. I'm more focused on 2-4 unit properties but I'd be more than happy to chat with you and see if I couldn't partner you up with a couple colleague investors in the area who DO tackle larger MF properties. Feel free to reach out to me if you're interested. 

- Troy 

@Jordan Szabo Hey Jordan, pleasure to meet you and welcome. I'm a local agent / investor out of Lansing, MI. I'm a little biased, but I think Mid-Michigan in general is a good spot to park your money for now. 

Would love to do a call / Facetime if you want to dive more into the details of Lansing and OOS investing. 

- Troy 

@Skyler Heimer Hey Skyler. I'm a local agent / investor myself and would recommend you reach out to any of these three for Property Management help. 

Sandy Bailey Bristol (Sandy’s Property Management)
(517) 285-5509

Bree Garrett (Good Company Realty)
(517) 706-9294

David Johnson (Simply Live Property Management)
(517) 927-5003