Posts Tagged ‘maximizing profits with rentals’

An amazing time to buy a foreclosure

Monday, February 27th, 2012

The past several months I have been searching for another investment/rental property to purchase, and have so far come up empty. Several times I found one, only to have it sold before I got my bid in. Today, I got my bid in on the above pictured foreclosure house. There are four bids on it and the bank will select one of us sometime this week.

The house is 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 1,400 sq ft, property in a nice neighborhood. The price is $53,000. It needs somewhere between $5,000 – $10,000 work to bring it up to rental condition, e.g., replacing sheet rock, electrical work, roof work, and flooring. It sold for $149,000 in 2006. I should be able to rent it for around $800/month. I’ll purchase with cash, if I get the house.

I would have preferred 2 bathrooms, but the house is in a good location and is otherwise a pretty good deal. I know several people with children who only have one bathroom and it works for them, even though I’m used to two.

Now is the time to take action

If you are just sitting on the fence, now is an opportune time to get into a investment house.

Of course, you must conduct a good inspection of the property either before you make the offer, or during the 7 to 10 day inspection period after your bid is accepted. Usually there are is no history of the property for you to examine, on foreclosures. It’s sold as is.

My main motivation is to that I can fairly inexpensively purchase a rental house, and it will provide me with an unusually large stream of income. I have other rental houses, but this new one will produce much more revenue because most of my income on the other properties goes to pay the mortgage company. Since I’m able to pay cash, this time all the revenue goes to me.

Rentals better than pensions

The great advantage of owning real estate property over having a pension is that your pension is fixed and what you get when you start it, is all you will ever get. For rental houses, the amount you receive from tenants goes up over time, with inflation, and you can never use it up.

The double win

It’s like being able to bet your money in Las Vegas, but then you get all the money that you lost back again when you leave. You get the monthly payments, like a pension. But, if you ever want to sell your investment house, you get the entire amount that you spent back again, and usually a lot more than that.


OTHER BLOG ARTICLES:

I encourage you to check out the insightful article How do you handle the whining tenants? over at landlordinvestor.com.

Increase profits by improving your rental property

Saturday, July 9th, 2011

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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