Avoid this guy as a tenant
Archive for the ‘landlording’ Category
NEWS FLASH — dealing with tenants a big issue for my class
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010Making an Offer on a Townhouse and Mulitple Careers
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008.
House Shopping
I am making an offer on a fixer-upper townhouse. It’s a 2 bed 2 bath unit in a row of about 10 townhouses, where I already own another townhouse. It’s not the proverbial “worst house in the best neighborhood” but it’s located in a mixed lower-middle to middle-class neighborhood where there is good demand for housing.
They are asking $115,000 and I am offering $100,000. I’ll let you know how it comes out.
One Person/Multiple Careers
I began reading Marci Alboher’s intriguingly entitled book One Person/Multiple Careers. It’s interesting to read about other people doing similar multiple careers to what we part-time real estate investors are doing. I’ll post a review of the book here soon.
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Buying in a Down Market, and Finding Ideal Tenents
Monday, April 14th, 2008‘
Related to the business of investing in fixer upper houses, I’d like to share with you a couple of good articles I came across recently.
5 Tips for Buying a Home in a Down Market
by Bankaholic.com
The subprime mortgage bust has scared a lot of people away from the shaky housing market. The nightly news is filled with images and stories of everyday Americans who are losing their homes because they made greedy and uninformed decisions, they were taken advantage of by predatory brokers, or a combination of these situations. However, the news isn’t all bad. This decline in the market has dropped prices and made housing affordable to many fiscally responsible renters who never considered home ownership to be an option.
If you find yourself house-hunting, make sure that you follow these five simple steps to take advantage of this downturn in the market; if you don’t, you could be the next sad story on your local news. Click here for full article.
What Makes an Ideal Tenant?
by Resty Malia
Who are the Folks That Makes an Ideal Tenant?
Finding the right tenant is a common challenge that most property managers encounters at one point or another in their life. The following bits and pieces of information in this article will allow you to have a better idea in picking the right or ideal tenant.
Searching for the right tenant can be simple or even a challenge sometime, but having an idea of the different types of America’s work force qualities as tenants could help you decide and screen the right and ideal tenant for your property.
So you have done your credit check with your prospective tenant ( you done it, right?) and now you’re probably wondering what part of the demographics would make an ideal tenant.
Generally there are Four (4) Population Strata or Groups where your prospective tenants will be coming from. Click here for full article.
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Six Sure Ways to Lose Money with Rental Properties, and Calendar Considerations when Buying
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008,
What are the best techniques to use to lose money with your rental properties? See my Ezinearticles.com piece entitled Six Guaranteed Ways For Landlords To Lose Money And Have Terminator-Type Tenants.
The top two ways to lose money are:
1. Buy a rental property in the worst possible area. The type of tenant you attract will be determined by the location and appearance of your investment property, and it will affect the amount of rent you are able to charge.
2. Buy the best fixtures and appliances for your property. Never by from recycled construction material shops or yard sales. Money is no objective. Trust that your tenants will take good care of you house.
Another article I recommend reading is Calendar Considerations When Buying A Home by Raynor James. Most markets are cyclical in nature. In practical terms, this means there are periods where the market in question is very busy and periods where it is very slow. These cycles also applies to the real estate market.
As Rayor James explains, buying a home in a seller’s market is tough. In contrast, buying during a slow market is an incredible opportunity. You have a chance to get in at or near the bottom floor of prices. If you can keep focused on the future, you can really make a killing. Yes, you might see the value of the home drop a bit more, but the key is to focus on 2010 and beyond. That may seem a long way away, but the real estate market will bounce back and have returned to typical highs by then. This is where millionaires will be made.
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Roundup of Favorite Blog Posts from the Past Week
Sunday, January 20th, 2008.
Below are the blog posts from the last week that I found most edifying and enjoyable.
Terry Sprouse’s book: Fix ‘em Up, Rent ‘em Out at Conniebrz.com (What can I say? I liked it.)
An easy way to reduce vacancies and rental property turnovers at twowiseacres
Landlord Profitability: Distance + Knowledge = Time and Money at Landlord Business Insider
Buy Now or Pay Later? by FSBO Jane
Down She Goes at Rentals R Us
Rehab Pros: DIY or Hire it Out? at BiggerPockets
Live and Learn at My REI
10 Ways to Completely Ruin Your Credit at Moolanomy
Don’t save it all up for retirement by ChristianPF
Money talk at the barber shop by getrichslowly
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Landlording Help
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007Landlording is a tough job, not for the faint of heart. Yet, its worth the time it takes to be a good landlord for the long-term profit we gain.
A pretty good webpage to learn about landlording is mrlandlord.com. They offer both free information as well as services that you can pay for, such as specialized documents, forms, newsletters and credit & background checks. I’ve read the newsletters and they are informative, with good tips on landlording. I bought a sampler pack of 12 back issues for $12. They also have a free page where rental owners ask landlording questions and get answers and tips from other landlords, and a searchable database of discussions on a plethora of topics.
Mr.Landlord advertises instant credit checks for $9.95, but when you get into the application process, it turns out that smaller rental property owners must also pay an annual fee of $59. Another way to get information on potential tenants is through the county courts webpage. In Tucson, you can search by a person’s name to find out any civil or criminal action has been taken against them.
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Who Was Your Quirkiest Tenant?
Thursday, September 13th, 2007
I’ve had a married couple in one of my rental houses for 16 months. I have them mail their monthly rental checks to my PO Box, as I do my other tenants. Yesterday, they called and asked me to give them my PO Box address so they could mail in the check. They had misplaced the address. Misplaced the address? In the past they have lost their keys. They have also lost their copy of the rental contract. Last month they mailed the check to the wrong address, and had to cancel their money orders and send me new ones (precipitating yesterday’s request).
Granted, I don’t have the greatest memory in the world. I call my kids the wrong names all the time, and yes, sometimes I absentmindedly use our dog’s name when calling out to one son (in my defense, both their names start with the same first letter). But, you’d think the mailing address for the landlord is such an important piece of information that they would try to make a special effort to keep track of it. I call that a little quirky.
Quirky tenants, of course, are better than out-and-out bad tenants who won’t take care of the house and don’t pay on time. I’ll take quirky any day. In either case, it’s always comforting to remember that whoever occupies your house is ultimately helping you to achieve your goals of financial independence. Each day that you have a tenant in the house, they pay off part of your mortgage, you clear a certain amount from the rental payment, and the value of your house goes up an average of 5% each year. (Well, it doesn’t go up 5% per year these days, but that’s the 30-year average. And, we have to be grateful for the big boost in equity that we received in the 2005-2006 housing boom.)
In general, if we have rental properties and long term-tenants, that’s a pretty good situation to be in.
Speaking of quirky tenants, check out Will Ferrell in The Landlord Video.
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Easing Your Way Into Landlording
Tuesday, August 7th, 2007My philosophy has always been that the best way to get started renting out properties was to first buy your own home, and then start buying rental properties. Cathy and Larry Passmore got started in the business through a completely different path. They managed apartment complexes, lived rent free, got outside jobs, and bought fixer-upper rental properties on the side.
For the Passmore’s, managing apartments was the best approach because 1) it let them get experience managing before they actually managed their own properties, and 2) it enabled them to determine whether or not they liked the work before they made any financial commitments.
Follow the link to read the full story of the Passmore’s approach in a Mother Earth News story from 1977, September/October issue.
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