All Forum Posts by: Lauren Myers

Thanks, everyone!

@Edward Synicky

Good to hear! And sound advice. I have already been in touch with the eastside REIA and have my eyes on the Tacoma and I believe it's Everett ones, but I've been out of town for months so I haven't managed to make it to a meeting yet. I'll keep an eye out for other meetups as well!

@Paul Timmins 

Great! It looks like I've got my work cut out for me! Looking through REIA information is what started making me think I could actually do this. I'm not sure what you mean you don't need to own the property to control it. What would you suggest?

@Roy N. 

Both great words of caution. I can definitely keep you posted on my progress! I have been mulling over the reliability of student managers ever since I came up with the idea. I like the idea of having a recent grad do it, and I've also considered things like having a management company run the property with an agreement with them to hire students to help with my properties, so it would be run by a team and not just a student, having me or someone I know go down regularly to check on properties and have the student just deal with routine maintenance issues and collecting rent, or having members of the social dance community (I'm the reason there's still a social dance club on campus) help me vet responsible employees. This will take more thought, and I greatly appreciate your input! As to the legal contract before purchasing together with, I absolutely agree. I've read books about what are called intentional communities, and most of them actually recommend creating and LLC or non-profit entity to own your property, and have a contract for buy-in. The thing about buying with friends is that it's important to make sure you've covered all the things that could go wrong and have a clear and binding plan for what happens for each of them, so when they do you're still friends. Thank you so much for bringing that up. Any advice for finding a good attorney is welcome, although I'm sure there's plenty on the forums!

Hi! I'm Lauren from Seattle, and I want to own student rentals. I'm absolutely new to real estate investing, but I stumbled on BP and here I am!

I went to school in Tacoma and ever since I haven't been able to put aside the idea of renting to students there, and hiring a student to manage the properties. I'm very adamant that students deserve the best rental experience possible - oftentimes their first - and that providing information and reliable and ethical property management is just as important as the roof over their head. I want to hire a student to manage both so I have someone on-site, but more importantly to give experience and income to current students. My school gave me a lot, and I want to give back.

In addition to that, I live with a group of friends, and we are talking about buying at least one property together - first the house we live in, then we'll see how that goes. 

I haven't done keyword searches for either of them yet, since the first page of blog entries was enough to convince me to sign up. I always take recommendations, though, especially on hiring and training students as property managers and buying as a group.

Excited to be here! Cheers,