All Forum Posts by: Yishi Garrard

Differs by state. I'm in AZ I've never had a judge ask for a copy of a lease at any of the eviction hearings I've been involved in. 

So I was watching Gangland on Netflix the other night, and they frequently talk about the territories and neighborhoods that are notorious for gang activity, or where if you turn down the wrong street, there's a good chance you're not coming out alive, etc. 

It got me thinking in regards to how housing in those neighborhoods work. I would assume that a lot of those are section 8 or government subsidized housing? But a lot of gang neighborhoods also have lots of single family homes, to where it looks like any other neighborhood to someone unfamiliar with the area. 

Does anyone know what kind of realtors would take listings in those neighborhoods, or take buyers through there? Also, are there investors that invest in those areas? Ultimately, someone has to collect rents, evict tenants, fix maintenance issues, etc. It just seems to me that with having to deal with ruthless and highly dangerous gangs, threats of drive by shootings, etc, it wouldn't be worth any amount of money for anyone to either property manage or own any of those properties. 

Thoughts? 

Hi Natalya,

Welcome to BP! I'm here in Tucson as well, and it's great to see more and more members joining from Tucson.

I am an owner of Habitation Realty, and we happen to have a property management division (300+ units under management), so I can give you a few tips on the questions that you asked.

-In regards to what to make the property most appealing to renters, I'd say that renters for the most part are pretty simple in terms of amenities. Unless your home is in the foothills and is a high end rental, then I'd say the main things would be ease of maintenance, and durability. Non-carpet flooring is a good choice (although l wouldn't recommend laminate). If you do have carpet, make sure to have it professionally cleaned once you move out. I'd also say that having air conditioning is a huge plus, as we've noticed renters here have started to expect central air instead of evap coolers on single family rentals. Having low maintenance landscaping is also important, as most tenants would rather not have to worry about watering and trimming a bunch of different plants and shrubs constantly. 

-Property management company selection. Well as I said, my company manages around 300 units around Tucson, so I'd be happy to discuss with you further our services and what we do. Essentially, we created our property management division because so many of our clients were unable to find quality property managers in town, and we started managing them on the side, and eventually grew it into a full scale operation. We run a 98% occupancy at any time, guarantee all tenants we place by paying for their evictions (we evict less than 1% of our tenants annually), but most importantly, we understand that our clients' properties are highly valuable investments, and treat them as such. I could go on and on, such as having annual property inspections with photos and reports, electronic payouts, electronic accounting statements, etc. We've never had an owner leave us to go to another company, and as we've grown, we've acquired a lot of clients that have paid cancellation fees to their existing management companies to switch to us. 

One of the coolest benefits that we've found with having this property management division is that it's allowed us to really serve our investors well because we can help them find and evaluate investment purchases and sales because of our intimate and constant knowledge of the rental market. Anyways, that's my plug :)

I wish you the best of luck with your real estate investing career, and I hope to see you around BP! 

Hey Grant, 

I have a property management company here in Tucson, and I also work with investors on buying and selling investment properties, and based on the numbers that you've presented, it seems to be pretty solid. I would agree with you that good deals here have been hard to come by recently. The fact that you can get an 8 cap with the 50% rule means that on paper it looks solid to me. However, one thing to keep in mind is where in Tucson this property is located. Tucson is definitely very "patchy", in terms of the value and conditions of neighborhoods varying a lot street by street. Much more so than a lot of other places. As long as your property is not in a part of town that falls into the "bad patch", then I think you're good. If you give me the address, I can at least give you my input if it's an area that I'm familiar with.

On a side note, if you will be needing property management services (if/after you buy this property, or if you currently have properties), then I'd be happy to talk to you about my property management company. We have about 300 units under management, and utilize the newest technologies and tools, and we typically run a 97% occupancy rate across our entire portfolio at any given time. 

Let me know if you have any other questions, and best of luck!

I would say quick books is definitely not the best choice if you're trying to integrate in accounting with property management. My property management company uses Propertyware for our 300 units that we manage. It has some very powerful accounting features that are specific to real estate, such as asset depreciation, cost segregation, etc. Id definitely give it a look. It's my understanding that Propertyware is a little bit more expensive than some of the other software providers, but from what I've heard, it has better accounting features than most.

I know of wholesalers here in AZ, so from a non legal advice perspective, my basic answer would probably be yes.

It would be great to have the messaging function available in the app. Currently, I have to open my browser to view and respond to messages. Also, having the ability to follow a topic/post would be a good feature without having to go through the web browser. The app also seems to crash when trying to access certain posts. Also, when the page loads the next chain of posts, it oftentimes will duplicate the last few posts on the refresh. Those are the main issues that I've noticed, for now.

Hi Trent,

I live in Tucson, but went to high school in SV, small world! My team works primarily investors, and we help with buying and selling of income properties, both single family and multi family. We also do flips as well, and have a property management company of approximately 300 units here in Tucson. It's a pretty cool combination because our knowledge of the rental market through our property management company gives us a much more detailed perspective of income properties in helping our buyers and sellers. 

Let me know if you'd be interested in discussing buying income properties, and I'd be happy to connect with you to see if we'd be a good fit. 

Welcome to Bigger Pockets! 

Hi Nicholas,

Welcome! I'm here in Tucson, AZ. I'm jealous, it seems like you get the best of both worlds depending on the season. Do you currently have any investments in Tucson?

It makes sense for a realtor to want to make you sign a contract to work with them. What do they get out of showing you a house, if you end up not working with them? Realtors work only on commission so it's only fair to expect them to protect their time like this. If I were you, I'd find a realtor that you want to work with, establish a relationship with them, and use them on your MLS deals, and as such, you can call on them to show you houses because they know they'll make the commission if you decide to buy.