All Forum Posts by: Vik Desai

I'd start making offers now.

But it's worth mentioning that I've seen a "reverse 1031" happen before.

The company I work for purchased property A, then sold property b and used the profit from sale of property B towards the already purchased property A via 1031.

Essentially the profit went towards principle.

We have a good accountant.

To answer some questions:

She's in a duplex and the smell is apparent at the entry to the neighbor's unit. 

My maintenance guy who went inside has said that it's pretty bad inside, but he has a tendency towards the dramatic.

She's said that she has a guy who she's going to pay to clean the place, but she's been saying it for months and isn't all there upstairs so I wasn't sure the guy was real.... until he called me recently asking about something.

So she knows it's a mess and is required to clean it, but she hasn't yet.

Also, there's a chance that she has some dementia started, as reported by a friend. But she's completely lucid to me; remembers every conversation, understands the things I'm telling her and rent is paid early every month.

Speaking of, do I have any liability in regards to her mental status?

I've got 4 units that I rent out furnished and all bills paid.

My target market is guys coming into town for work and want to save compared to a hotel, Most of my contracts are month to month, I'm getting nearly double market rent, and I have a wait list (I know many of you are wondering about vacancies).

One lady has ended up with me in a long term situation and is happily paying the higher rent, uses less utilities than her neighbor, fixes her own stuff, even though I implore her not to and to let me pay my handiman to do it, and pays rent early.

I knew she had one cat.  One cat has turned into at least 6 litter boxes and taking in uncountable strays. I know the apartment stinks, I know that I'm going to have to pay a ton to fix it after she's out, I know that it's going to cost vacancy on top of the repair.

But she's paying....

I am putting some pressure on her to clean up, but with so many "Of course, Hun", and other pleasantries, I haven't really come down on her hard.

My thought is: 

I'm going to have to do the repairs no matter what. whatever damage she's caused is unlikely to get worse (she's been there over a year). What's the difference in doing it now and doing it in another 6 months or possibly years down the line?

@Brian Barnes I had this idea exactly, I'm also involved in the hotel business. Hampton Inn is going to a similar style. The free WiFi is fine for the average user's facebook, YouTube  and Amazon, but if you want to do some serious bandwidth abuse, you have to pay for it.  

Do you think your company could sell a kit of sorts to businesses that would want to do this? 

@Loren Thomas There are set ups made for this very thing.  Things like mesh networks and repeaters and access points can get this done pretty easily.

I come from the hotel world so it's a similar set up there.

@Al Williamson For my current units, they're actually all bills included so I include the wifi with that, currently.  But I was considering using my existing two story building as a tower of sorts to broadcast the wifi to the neighborhood that surrounds it.

Also I feel like the trailer park situation is a little different than an apartment situation because people are bringing their own homes in, I feel like the paradigm is just different.  Also the self serve internet model would be preferred to a lot of people vs the go into an office with 3 forms of I.D. and wait for for the cable guy to come to your house and install the equipment.

I'm waiting to amass capital for my next property, and in the mean time I'm trying to figure out alternative sources of income.  I'd like to put a small laundry facility in, but I don't have room on my lot that has 4 units on it

I wasn't sure where to post this, I hope it's the right forum.

I've got a friend with a 20 unit trailer park set up, and I was talking to him about setting up a wifi hotspot to make a little extra money on the side.

http://www.sputnik.com/support/faq/

sputnick is one option.

Then, as we all do, I started thinking big and thought why not just set up my own wireless ISP for the area around my properties?

This is what gave me the idea for the WISP 

http://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2fts...

Has anyone done anything similar?

If this is in the wrong section, I can remove and repost it, or feel free to move it if you can.

Thanks.

It's always best to be able to see them all. But it also depends on the deal.

I bought my 4 with only seeing one. But it was under priced for what it was, and I knew that I could raise rent significantly (almost double) so I went through it anyway.

Ended up having to replace a floor, but that was the only unforeseen expense. YMMV

@Christopher R. Commercial loan.  I'm in a small town and my banker knows me personally. He wouldn't let me get a homeloan.

also, the yearly cost to maintain an LLC varies by state.

@Christopher R. I have the same question.  My family is in the hospitality business and we keep each property under a separate entity, accountants and lawyers have recommended this.

But I'm not sure if it applies to these businesses that are 100x smaller in scope.  And for what it's worth, my current property, a 4plex, is financed to an llc.