All Forum Posts by: Will Chamberlin

@Leo Gonzalez, congrats! I also invest in syracuse from out of state. The house looks nice, which part of town are you in?

@Tom Chen, you can probably get a Lowe's business account card to fund some of the hard expenses. The rate is over 20% but you can get some decent discounts there if you use to pro desk. Be sure to talk to someone there and offer to take floor stock, scratch and dent, in stock materials, etc. Just pay it off as fast as you can with your cash flow. For labor expenses I don't have a great answer. I have used personal credit cards a times to get things done asap since you don't want that unit to be empty for long. Maybe see what Prosper.com has as your rate and get a 5 yr loan for the expenses there. I haven't done that personally, though. You can also crowd-source it from friends and family. I have $1000 I can send you ;) 

For the work itself, what needs to be done with the floors? If it is just putting down a new floor, then I might just have some place like Onondaga Flooring quote you a new floor. I put a nice looking linoleum floor in a large kitchen for $1000 (including quarter round and doorway transitions). 

@Katherine S., did not see this mentioned above so have you tried getting them to pay you directly from their employer? I have a tenant with the same issue that we switched to this (after making the suggestion to them) and since then have not had a single late payment. Also now that this is set up on the employer side I think that maybe there is less motivation to leave as well as less budget management they need to do. The net result is that paying rent is now their top priority by default instead of falling down the list after phone, cable, etc., each month. The downside is that if they lose their job or changes jobs we are back to square one but would hopefully get them to set it up again.

@David Zuber, I haven't been seeing a ton of multi-families I like in the city proper, which is why I started looking more west. Not living locally, I stay away from student rentals and lower end stuff in the city. 

You might want to talk to @Tom Chen about Solvay, he has a duplex there. My father-in-law grew up in Solvay and lived there up until a couple years ago so I am somewhat familiar and have considered some properties there but nothing has worked out yet. 

I like Liverpool a lot but in the village the taxes are substantial so just make sure it all pencils out. I am happy with my Tipp Hill house even though it is only a SFH w/o parking. Next time I would go 2 - 3 fam with parking if I could find one.

Assuming I close on schedule in mid-August I should be back in the cuse for a week or two in late August or early September and will set up a meetup for us cuse BPers. In the meantime I'm available here on the site or can do a skype call if you have detailed questions to work through.

Since you are local I would recommend driving for dollars every weekend. You might come across a deal and will definitely learn which neighborhoods you want to be in, maybe down to the block. My personal (and biased) favorites are: Westvale, Camillus, Fairmont for SFH; Tipp Hill and Liverpool for multi and SFH.

You don't mention it but house-hacking is a great way to get started, learn the ropes of landlording and build equity in a lower risk fashion. I started that way with a duplex and don't regret it.

Hi @David Zuber, and welcome to the cuse investor family! Always good to have more people involved and helping each other out. I have houses in Tipp Hill, Liverpool, and Westvale plus under contract in Marcellus and Geneva right now so happy to answer questions on neighborhoods and help with your deal analysis if you need it. Lots of solid people hanging out here that invest in syracuse. Good luck.

@CJ Witmer, I would agree with @Anthony Barbato & @Vinod Dasani that you should keep looking at deals and that there are options. I know of lenders who will count equity in the deal as your down payment so if you can find a deal like that you may not need much to get in. Having the seller hold a second is also an option although I am not sure how common that is these days. You could also get a round of friends and family money as you now have a track record, albeit fairly short. Just keep plugging away and know your numbers. When you find the right deal the options will generally present themselves.

@Leo Gonzalez, do you mean wear and tear? I've only had the SFHs in the burbs for a couple years but nothing major yet. Just turned one over and had to re-paint the whole place which was expensive but it was the first time I've painted since I bought and think that since I use the same color scheme and paint for each house it should be a cheaper touch-up job in the future. Have had to replace an A/C unit but it was factored in to my CapEx budget pre-purchase so it wasn't a surprise and outside of a few minor handyman and plumbing issues, it has been pretty hassle-free. I know people aren't flocking to the cuse but finding tenants hasn't been too much of an issue, either. We turned over the one house with no vacancy because the tenant moved out a little early so maybe some luck there. Seems like a month gap on turnover would be normal whereas for student housing you can probably get that down to a couple days or so if they leave for the summer. I don't have any student housing so not entirely sure but it seems like that was the case when I was living off-campus. Hope that helps!

Hi Fadi,

I live in the bay area and invest in Syracuse plus went to SU so I have some experience here. I would say that cash flow can be higher but so is management and overhead so it will depend on whether you are self-managing or using a prop mgmt company. With students you are going to be paying placements fees and painting pretty much every year. This is in addition to getting co-signers on the leases and other extra effort you won't necessarily have outside of student housing. Being remote and self-managing, I have stayed more to the suburbs for now. Maybe when I have enough properties to do real estate full-time I would consider it but just not there yet. Good luck and feel free to hit me up with any additional questions you might have. Happy to provide my two cents.

Depends on the lender but I have had no issues doing this over multiple transactions.

@Matt J., while I am not free just yet I am making steady progress and negotiating with my employer to 'retire' on thursdays and fridays to free up time to do bigger deals and start syndicating. Keeping track of (and minimizing) your expenses is just as important as cash flow, especially for me living in a HCOL location. I am up to 8 doors but more importantly, refi'd one to save $550/mo payment last year and have no car payment or cell phone plan. I am not starving myself but am always looking to cut unnecessary expenses. Everything extra in the budget is going to REI and paying down mortgages. If you want to go deep into FI then check out this sub-reddit. Skews heavily towards tax-advantaged indexing and retirement accounts but lots of interesting discussions there. Nice work taking action.

Good luck with your journey. I find the more people I tell what I am doing the more I make sure to get it done so keep on networking.