All Forum Posts by: Rick Bassett

Originally posted by @Jay Hinrichs:

others have talked about how you can watermark your craigslist adds to prevent this.. i would think CL would make this mandatory there are millions being stolen this way from honest folks  that are just not experinced with this stuff.

The watermark is just part of the solution, we had that but was cropped out. CL should require trusted status and verified identity for all advertisements. 

Originally posted by @Mike G.:

@Rick Bassett

Revenge on the scammers, hopefully you turned your findings over to the police and they actually do something, actually since that scam is multi-state wide i believe that makes it a federal crime. lol  good work your awesome man!!!! you got my vote!

 I turned him into Craigslist, who won't do anything but take these ads down, which they did. I provided the info to Moneygram, who knows if they will do anything. Law enforcement doesn't really bother with this type of stuff.

The real problem here is the Craigslist platform for not providing any screening mechanism against these scammers. While I didn't suffer any loss there is a good chance that there are victims who did send money to this guy. I've seen that happen multiple times at other properties that we've listed.

A scammer on Craigslist cloned our rental advertisement on Zillow. We are asking $2100/mo rent and they are offering our house for $1290/mo (less than my mortgage) so I decided to engage him for 24 hours, apply for my own property and see where to send the money. It probably wasn't the best use of my time but I've wasted far more on sillier things. 

The following are screenshots of my conversation with the scammer, enjoy!

Rick 

We converted 2 of our houses to STR's when tenants broke their leases during the winter.

One was 4 bedroom that typically rents for $1,800/mo as an LTR, we averaged $2,200 per month on Airbnb/VRBO with that one. It basically broke-even until the prime rental season kicked in when we rented it as an LTR. We spent $4,000 on furnishings and fixtures to get it running.

The other is a 5 bedroom that typically rents for $2,000/mo as an LTR, we spent $5,000 on furnishings and fixtures to get it running, that one took a while to generate a following, it was hovering around $2,000 in Airbnb/VRBO rents, so it was losing money with utils and the like. It has since climbed to $4,000 - $5,000 per month in STR rents and we decided to keep in online as STR through the summer of 2019 to see how it does.

We've only been doing the STR's for about 9 months but have earned Superhost status and have about 40 5-star reviews, so that is helping to drive interest. We are in an area that is not a vacation destination, people come here for family and life-related events such as; weddings, funerals, family parties, etc. We also do not get very many business travelers as we are in suburbs.

Bottom line: some money to be made, but not much for the amount of work involved. I do like having one of our units available to lodge family, friends and long-term tenants coming from out of town to view our other properties.

Rick

Here is the scenario: We have a property available for rent 8/1/18 (occupied until 7/31). We can generally do a turnover within 24 hours (sometimes with a punch list of remaining items) but this time around we are getting a lot of interest from potential Section 8 tenants. 

As most of us know, Section 8 requires an inspection before approving the property, setting the rent amount and approving the lease arrangement. 

The rub is that the Housing Authority will not inspect the property until it is empty. This means we essentially lose a month's rent (August) by the time that they inspect, make their offer and approve the deal (if they do at all).

This is obviously a big disincentive for us as landlords and a bad situation for voucher holders as well.

I was wondering how others are handling this gap?

Rick 

I would and have paid a premium to own contiguous properties on several occasions even when the #'s were not perfect and I'm glad that I did. 

For instance, in early 2012 I bought a house for $145k and put $25k into it = $170k. Then at the end of 2012, the house behind it (abutting backyards) came available and we bought it for $155k plus $25k into it = $180k. Then late 2016 the house next to the 2nd one came available at $187k (turnkey), yep we scooped that one up as well. So we ended up with 3 properties that touch each other and collect rents that average $1,750/mo on each of them. Our banker loved it a refi time and each of these houses is now worth over $210k.

Having said that, there are times when we passed on contiguous properties when the numbers were so far out of whack that they would never make sense.

Rick

As others have said, accepting Section 8 (or others with Housing Assistance) isn't always a bad thing as long as you screen the potential tenants exactly like everyone else.

What we find is that our local housing office tends to eliminate most chances of Section 8 tenancy by their bureaucratic processes. For instance; 1) They require an inspection of an empty unit, by the time that our houses are empty they are already rerented with market rate tenants. We tell the housing office that we will keep advertising it until we have a signed lease, which they won't authorize until after the inspection. 2) They always insist on lower than market rate rent, which we won't accept, even though the federal guideline tables provide for more generous rents. While we are required to accept all legal forms of payment, we aren't legally required to accept less rent for a person with housing assistance than advertised.

Rick

Andres, Don’t give her a dime until she is out, it’s broomswept and she gives you the keys. Frankly, I wouldn’t trust her to leave or to live up to this agreement as she’s broken 2 others with you already. If you need to go down the eviction route I know a good attorney in Hamden that can handle it. If she fights you the fees run about $1500 but less than that if she doesn’t fight. In the meantime, play by the rules don’t make any mistakes and don’t get emotional. It’s hard but if you cross the line she could stay in there for a very long time. Hit me up on PM if you need that attorneys info. Rick

We have some pretty good experience with this as we are currently operating 2 AirBnB's and 1 STR (AirBnB look-a-like) in several of our longer-term rental properties.

We did the 2 AirBnB's as tenants had broken their leases (bailed early) in the fall, which is low rental season here in Greater New Haven. Our goal for these AIrBnB's was to try to cover our operating costs during the winter months until the summer tenants moved in.  They are coming close to doing that but it's certainly a lot more work and has a lot more upfront expenses than a traditional long-term rental without the extra profit.

I've become a student of AirBnB's over the past several months, reading and viewing everything that I can. I'm comfortable that our listings are good, our properties are inviting and we are priced competitively, it's just that Greater New Haven isn't a vacation destination. People come here for other reasons.

Unless I was in an area that was a vacation destination, like FT Lauderdale, Miami...etc, I wouldn't consider acquiring property to operate an AirBnB (or any other type of short-term rental) and I would do a full competitive analysis before buying in a place like that to make sure that there is actual demand.

Rick

We have had this happen a number of times. Cable/springs or pulleys let go. 1st time it happened we freaked out but as Mike McCarthy said, it's not an emergency. Get the tenants car out of there (they may not be able to use the garage for a few days) and call someone in to fix it. Our garage door guy usually charges us about $125-$200 to fix this.

BTW - garage door issues happen often enough that we have a relationship with a garage door guy.

Rick