All Forum Posts by: Eric W.

A short term quick answer is to get your property back on the right track with good property management. Personally, I am not familiar with Pottstown at all, but a quick Google search tells me that it is in the Philadelphia area. That being said, a major market like Philly should have all kinds of property management companies there. Units sitting vacant for 2 months is ridiculous. Either the management is sitting on their butts doing nothing or the units are priced wrong.

Secondly, a good management company will deal with the day to day operations for you (notices, tenant issues, etc.) which leaves you to sit back and look at the numbers more carefully and determine what your goals are with this property.

My quick advice is to fly there for 2 or 3 days and line up meetings with at least 6 different management companies before hand. Any quality company should welcome the meeting in their office to propose to you what they can do for you. Also, don't be afraid to demand an update every other day on the vacant units from your current manager or the new one you find (where are the units advertised, how many calls today, how many showings).

As you can tell, I am a huge proponent of good management. I think when an owner worries less about the little stuff you can focus more easily on the numbers and big picture.

For the properties that my business manages as well as our own holdings our general procedure is that we do annual inspections on single family rentals to check the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors as well as a overall condition of the property. For apartments we do the same, but since there is generally more turnover in apartments we find that we're in the units more frequently anyway.

Once we are in a unit to inspect the detectors all sorts of other things tend to come up, some big and some small. Minor example would be a satellite dish installed where it shouldn't be, and a major example would be a huge toilet leak that has gone unreported for a long period of time.

@Engelo Rumora

I am actually looking for the same type of software and for a reasonable price. Someone I was talking to the other day suggested ACT CRM. Many people also suggest Salesforce, but I think it may be a little more pricey.

@Nate Hollembaek

I am in the Portland area so I do not know the Eugene market extremely well, but I do know enough about it that I think it is a fairly stable market for buy and hold investments because of the fact that it is a college town as well as an attractive city for people to live in long term.

Not to sound too cliché, but you should probably get connected with a local real estate investors association there. It would actually benefit you in two ways (learning about investing opportunities and techniques, AND promoting your current business with the other investors and property managers). There is probably a landlord association too that could benefit your current business.

Also, instead of looking at 4-plexes right off the bat, you may want to look for a single family rental that may be more affordable for you to buy. Or maybe a duplex that you could live in one unit and rent the other.

Just a few thoughts, but there is always the possibility of partnering to get the bigger deals too.

@Peter Fuentes I live in the Portland area where my company is also located and I lived in L.A. for several years before coming to Portland. Having said that, I agree with most of the other replies in that L.A. has an extremely high cost of living, California is not a business friendly or a landlord friendly state, and the real estate investing competition is extremely high as well (for both small time and big time players) . If your move is strictly based on real estate investing potential, I would stay in Oregon.

Mason Valenzuela, I also live in the Portland area. I would say that one of the most important aspects to real estate investing is knowing your market. Sure there is competition in Portland, but there are also quite a few more opportunities and resources. I see that you mentioned that you've attended some REIA meetings, NWREIA? Maybe I'll see ya there sometime. Also, the entire Portland metro area has well over 1 million people, which you can't forget about. There are long term employers such as Nike, Columbia, Intel, Adidas, etc.

All that being said, Kelso is only 50-60 miles away which makes it possible to pursue both markets at the same time.

I'm in. Is there a link?

William Chrisman, I know this topic has been commented on quite a bit, but if I were you I would without question seriously look into your options of taking out a loan on your primary residence ONLY if you use it towards acquiring more real estate.

The bottomline is if you can use that equity to buy another rental property that will provide enough cashflow that it will be greater than the payment of your new mortgage on your primary residence, that is a good thing in my opinion. Even if the difference only netted you $50 a month (I'm sure it would be more than that). Not only have you now increased your overall monthly income, you now have another property with another tenant paying down your loan for you. I am definitely a buy/hold type guy so when I see an opportunity to borrow for appox. 4% in order to earn 6-8% if not more, I'm all over it.

Also, you don't want to forget about water/sewer expenses and trash service. I find that those are two expenses commonly forgotten about. Most of the time tenants will not be responsible for those expenses in a multi-unit building, not to say that you couldn't change that though.

Hey Andy O. welcome to the site. I am also in Portland. I agree that cash on cash returns here are not what they are in other parts of the country, but I see a lot of good things ahead for the Portland area as far as real estate goes.