Connie Brzowski

Archive of Connie Brzowski's Articles

Connie has written 12 article(s) for the BiggerPockets Blog.

Is the Time Right to Invest in Real Estate? Chicken Little vs. PollyAnna

by Connie Brzowski | April 19, 2008

If you’re considering real estate as an investment, there’s one thing you’re guaranteed to hear: Now is not a good time. Your brother-in-law, your best friend, and your Great Aunt Minnie (who keeps her riches in a cigar box under the doghouse) will all surely recite text and verse. The time for real estate is [...]

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Landlord Tenant

Managing Tenants Part Four: The Home Office (a thing of beauty and a joy forevermore)

by Connie Brzowski | February 16, 2008

For the novice real estate investor, it’s mighty tempting to handle business deals and tenant phone calls from home, but having a home office or dedicated office area provides a degree of separation essential for running a successful real estate enterprise. No matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to sound professional with a screaming [...]

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Landlord Tenant

Managing Tenants Part Three: Written Criteria for Tenant Selection

by Connie Brzowski | February 9, 2008

Success as a [tag]landlord[/tag] depends on screening tenants-weeding out the Naughty and renting to the Nice. Awareness of (and compliance with the Fair Housing Act is not only necessary, but essential to success for any [tag]rental[/tag] business. Adopting a set of written criteria for tenant selection is one of the best (and easiest) ways to [...]

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Landlord Tenant

Managing Tenants, Part Two: Steering Clear of the Fair Housing Act

by Connie Brzowski | February 2, 2008

“No person shall be subjected to discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, age, or national origin.” Housing discrimination isn’t a joke. It’s against the law and narrow-minded landlords who refuse to rent to those belonging to protected classes can find themselves on the wrong end of a well-deserved lawsuit. Of course, [...]

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Landlord Tenant

Managing Tenants, Part One: 5 Favorite Lease Clauses

by Connie Brzowski | January 26, 2008

Like every other [tag]landlord[/tag], we’ve had a few tenants with Special Needs. My favorite story (given a healthy amount of hind-sight and a Valium or three) involves a well-qualified, newly single business manager who moved into our quaint ‘40′s style garage apartment. On paper, she looked like a dream [tag]tenant[/tag]–stable job, good income, decent credit. [...]

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Economy

The Mortgage Crisis Has a Silver Lining (…and other truths you won’t hear on cable news this week)

by Connie Brzowski | January 19, 2008

We’re living in exciting times. Folks all over are blowing the trumpet of doom and despair concerning [tag]REI[/tag]. In fact, the [tag]mortgage crisis[/tag] has almost reached cliché status (we’re anxiously awaiting Rosie to expound on her blog before declaring this a done deal.) Granted, it all sounds pretty bleak and while I’m not trying to [...]

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Rehabbing

Should Real Estate Rehabbers DIY or Hire a Professional Contractor?

by Connie Brzowski | January 13, 2008

You don’t need the construction skills of Bob Vila to be a rehab professional, yet it’s no secret you can save if you do some of the work yourself. As a general rule, estimates from contractors in our area run 1/3 for materials and 2/3′s for labor. So theoretically, we save 66% by doing the [...]

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Rehabbing

Carpet or Tile? Rehab Decision Making for Nervous Newbies

by Connie Brzowski | December 29, 2007

Rehabbing a house can be a nail-biting experience, particularly the first time around. Sometimes, nice readers over at my blog email asking advice about their latest rehab project. Generally, the questions involve finishing issues such as whether to paint or replace kitchen cabinets, or if carpet or wood floors work better in a rental. I [...]

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Learn Real Estate

That’s Too Risky! Overcoming a Poverty-Mindset

by Connie Brzowski | December 22, 2007

Danger Will Robinson! The mister and I married in 1980. We were 19, freshly spit-out by the public school system and totally clueless about the real-life world of household finance. Our parents were lower middle class, Depression-era survivors with a ton of fear about anything deemed risky…and pretty much everything was considered risky. For the [...]

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Landlord Tenant

Avoiding Landlord Stereotypes

by Connie Brzowski | December 13, 2007

Simon Lagree Had it All Wrong Without doubt, being a landlord requires a certain mindset. Before actually owning rent houses, I was certain I didn’t want to participate based on our first experience as tenants. Right after the wedding, the mister and I moved into a lovely little duplex on the edge of town. We [...]

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Learn Real Estate

Loose Lips Sink Ships (or The Strategy of Silence in REI)

by Connie Brzowski | December 8, 2007

Recently, during a relatively calm and drama-free conversation, daughter #3 (the cheeky one running around the kitchen at this very moment with a doily on her head) asked, “Mom? Now that you’ve plastered your name all over the internet, I guess its okay to tell people we’re landlords, right? Ignoring for a moment the habit [...]

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Landlord Tenant

Targeting Terrific Tenants

by Connie Brzowski | December 1, 2007

The mister and I waited years before buying our first rent house. Of all the various and sundry reasons for staying out of the game, our biggest obstacle was a severe case of Tenant-phobia– the crippling fear of Landlording. To make matters worse, anytime the subject came up, helpful friends and relatives regurgitated the same [...]

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