All Forum Posts by: Zack Leverette

I vote shower rod. If you live in an area with hard water it will ruin the door if not cleaned frequently. We have high calcium levels in our water and I have to clean our shower door with a squeegee after every shower and clean the grout often to keep it from building up.

I would send a notice to vacate due to two violations of the rental agreement and move on to another tenant before they destroy the house.

^^^ I agree with these guys. It is well worth the extra money to make sure your getting all the proper deductions. I also advise set up a meeting with the CPA and make sure they are comfortable with doing taxes for real estate investors.

@John Patterson

I would call around to local banks or find a mortgage broker. We use a mortgage broker that uses our cash flow towards our earned income which reduces our DTI. They do require a copy of the lease and verify the money is going into our account.

@Seth Galligan

The biggest con is having to have a licensed contractor do the work. We used a 203k loan on our primary residence to put a roof on which wasn’t bad because we only had to pay out to one person. I have heard it can be a headache when you have multiple people doing work. The best bet is find a lender that does a ton of these loans that way neither your or the lender end up surprised by anything.

@Nathan G.

Before we hand keys over I walk the property with the new tenant and go over a check list that we both sign and date. We also take a picture of each room for documentation as well. I think it is a win-win for both tenant and landlord.

@Jason C.

Congrats! We are in Macon as well, what side of town are you investing in? We are closing on our third property this year with Ben next Thursday.

We use Cozy to post our rentals on realtor.com and also post on Zillow. We also place a nice printed for rent sign in the yard and also another sign with a arrow pointed towards the house on the busy road leading to it. I tried the Facebook and deleted the ad within a day from people wasting my time.

I also recommend taking good quality photos of the home. On our first rental we only had one exterior photo on the initial listing because we were still painting, once we posted interior photos we were getting blown up with people wanting to schedule an appointment to look. 

We have our second rental property ready to go and just had a couple complete a credit and background check. Background on both are clean but both have low credit in the 530’s. From the report it appears they have gotten several small short term loans. Some have been paid on time some have not and ended in collections. The female is currently in school and has student loan debt. Their current home they have rented for 9 years. Both have had steady jobs for 5+ years and make well above 3x rent. I plan on calling the applicants to find out why the small loans were not paid. Does the income, steady job, and long rental history out weigh the bad credit?

Edit: The elederly mother will also be living with them should we run her credit in hopes of a higher score since she will be on the rental agreement. The mother also still works. 

Thanks

-Zack

@Ehsan Rishat

It looks like he meant $183k is his total investment.