Terry Sprouse

I’d like to share with you an email that received from an insightful real estate investor who, I think, uses a great way to increase his rental profits.

Hi Terry;

I have been the landlord of a triplex for just over 5 years. For most of that time, I simply maintained the property that I owned after making a couple of bigger renovations (windows and insulation). The biggest challenge I had was that my existing tenants paid way below market rent and rent control would not allow me to increase rents beyond 0.7%-2.2% each year. I felt stuck.

Recently, one of those tenants moved out. I managed to gut and redo the one bedroom unit and once it was finished I rented it out for almost double what I was getting before! This took the pressure off quite a bit but I realized I had to get my other “long term” renter out of her apartment. I ended up paying her to leave (2 months free rent) but it looks like it paid off. Her rent for a 2 bedroom was $474.77, but I have a lease now on the apartment for $799 a month. Surprisingly, I got this tenant because they saw pictures of the first unit I did and knew that I was finishing the second unit the same way. When they did the walk through the place was gutted and I didn’t even have the walls framed in yet!

I have looked at some other systems out there, but it seems to me that the only one that really works is finding a run down property with below market rents in a good area, fixing it up, and rerenting to higher classed tenants. If I knew a few years back what I know now, I would get the old tenants out ASAP even if I need to use my “cash for keys” program.

Right now I work full time so I rely on a dependable contractor that I feel I can trust. I hope to start renovating my own houses down the road, but I think I might need to get rid of my job to free up the time. Currently, I just do a walk through each day to see what work has been done and simply manage the renovation. Once the triplex is completely turned around next month I figure I will start looking for another project; I just need to convince my wife who still has fresh memories of my less stellar tenants.

Anyway, wishing you all the best!

Jim Thrower

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Tags: increase profits or rental properties, maximizing profits with rentals

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 9th, 2011 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Fix em Up Rent em Out, fixer uppers, for rent, rental, rental house improvements, rental houses, rental properties, rental property, rentals, renting, repair, repairing properties, repairing rental houses, repairs, safe ways to invest in real estate, small investor, start small. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.