All Forum Posts by: Yishi Garrard

Hey Chantel, welcome from a fellow arizonan. My team is down here in Tucson, so let me know if you're interested in investing down here and we can see if there are any opportunities for us to work together. See you around! 

Good luck. We are scouring the MLS every day and the good flip deals get snatched up real quick.

It seems a bit far from the UofA to turn it into a college property. My team works with a lot of investors on UA properties, and that area is one of our specialties (we do flips, sales, and property management for our clients). However, I'm going to say that without having seen the property but just based on the location, it's going to be tough for you push the rents up. Once you go south of Broadway, it starts to get iffy on getting student level rents. There have been (and continues to be) lots of new student builds going up in the neighborhoods immediately surrounding the UA, so the supply is definitely increasing. I'd say your chances of turning a property this far out, and in that area into a good student rental property is going to be pretty tough. If you did want to go for that strategy, you're going to want to find a property manager that's willing to go through the work of transitioning out those tenants and bringing in new tenants, and working with you on the upgrades on the property. 

Something else to keep in mind is that there are professional tenants out there that spend their days trying to screw over landlords by filing false complaints and trying to get free rent credit for non-issues, etc. These people know the ins and outs of the landlord tenant laws and can make your life hell. 

@Steve Babiak, the galvanized pipe was definitely something that she saw and identified, but there's no way to know how much useful life those things have. Generally speaking, the galvi should be going bad right around now, but some may last few 5-10 years longer than other sections of the property. This particular property is 4 duplex buildings, and some of the units haven't had any problems in years, whereas some have had constant leaks. I guess my point was more that you can't really know when that repair will come. Of course, there's always the other route of preemptively knocking out the replacement on all the galvi, but that's a pretty big cost, so you would have to factor in the cash flow and cash reserves situation before making that decision. She knows that she will eventually need to replace all the plumbing in that place, and luckily she's very solvent and has the reserves to handle it. However, an inexperienced investor just starting out could find themselves quickly in over their head if they had not identified this as a future expense. 

Definitely a good lesson for sure. Key takeaways would be building reserves and anticipating CAPEX ahead of time. Another reason why it's so important to do a thorough inspection during the continegency period of the transaction.

I had a client who had to re-plumb half of a duplex at a cost of almost $5000 because there was a leak in the slab because it was old galvanized pipe whereas the other half of the unit had new copper. No way that she could've foreseen that on the home inspection, but it just goes to show the importance of having those reserves. 

Always check the Arizona Residential Landlord Tenant Act on this type of stuff. I run a property management company and my general manager is constantly referring to it, even on situations that he's dealt with several times before. I suggest printing a copy out and keeping it handy, because it's so handy to have next to you to reference for these types of situations. 

Yup, listen to everyone else here. I run a property management company here in AZ and we definitely have run into these types of tenants. They will just continue to complain and make a big deal out of everything, and will be a massive drain on your time and resources. 

Sounds like you already know what you need to do.  Best of luck!

Hi @Lisa Misuraca

Congrats on your second project! Did you guys already sell the property or is the project still underway? Matt Carpenter works on our team, and yes, that project you're referring to is definitely costly, and the house definitely needs a lot of work. 

What type of rehabs do you typically do? How long have you been doing this? 

Not sure if this is the case nationwide, but in Tucson AZ, we've found that Truly Nolan provides the best price on bedbug treatments, but the biggest benefit is that they offer a 1 year warranty on the treatment, which is unheard of with any other pest control companies. Most companies will treat it but not warranty the work for more than 30 days. Again, I'm not sure if this is true for truly Nolan offices nationwide, but definitely worth looking into if you do need treatment. We have a property management division within our sales team at Keller Williams so we definitely know how big of a pain bedbugs can be.