landlording

Interview with CPA & Real Estate Investor: Charles Perkins

by Joshua Dorkin | June 2, 2011

Charles Perkins is a real estate investor and CPA located in Seattle, Washington with experience in both residential and commercial investments. In our interview with Charles (29:29 minutes), we get some great tips about topics such as finding a competent CPA, rehabbing, landlording, screening desperate tenants, and buying commercial property. You can also find out [...]

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Landlord Tenant

Buying Your First Rental? Be Sure To Do The Right Math!

by Shae Bynes | October 28, 2010

I was recently speaking with a new investor (let’s call her Maya for simplicity) who is looking into acquiring single family homes as rental properties. The conversation we had about her expected net positive cashflow on a particular property reminded me that it’s so important to understand the basic mathematics for real estate to ensure [...]

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Commentary

Investors: It’s OK to Get “Rich” A Little Bit Slower

by Shae Bynes | October 15, 2010

Today’s post is simply meant to be food for thought for those who (like me) enjoy real estate investing, but aren’t passionate enough about it to spend all your working hours focused on growing or maintaining a large real estate business because your zeal and purpose lie in other things. You respect real estate as [...]

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Landlord Tenant

Getting Tenants in Tough Times

by Brendan O'Brien | November 17, 2009

The U.S. rental vacancy rate is now the highest it has ever been, at 11.1%. This is not at all what we expected when the housing market crashed and mortgage companies started going out of business in record numbers. At that time, the prediction was that landlords would actually benefit, because people who weren’t able [...]

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Real Estate Investing

Investment Property Nightmares: How to get rid of that smell!

by Winston Westbrook | September 7, 2009

I purchased my first investment property in Victorville, CA. It was an REO that looked ok on the outside but I had no idea what I was going to find inside. When I opened the door to take a look inside I couldn’t believe anyone could live in such conditions. The place looked and smelled like a garbage dump. I am not kidding, it literally looked like one. Roaches would cascade down doors I opened them up. I think they were upset that I disturbed their sleep, lol. The previous owners pets no doubt had full range of the house, but especially in this one particular front bedroom. The smell of urine was so bad you needed a gas mask. Even though the property was in need of many repairs it was still a great investment.

The Battle to Clean this Investment Property

I ended up purchasing the property and began to gut it out. I removed all the carpet and hauled out all the trash. The smell began to lighten up around the house but this front bedroom still had that awful smell. I thought that by taking the carpet and padding out it would of solved the problem, but I was dead wrong.

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Learn Real Estate

Save Your Sanity, Learn Your Building

by Brendan O'Brien | August 29, 2009

A while back, I mentioned my project installing a bathroom ceiling fan as an example of something automated systems wouldn’t help with – a dirty, uncomfortable job I had to do myself.

That doesn’t mean the job had to be nearly as difficult as it was. I could have saved a huge amount of time if I had taken some steps to learn the building beforehand.

A Hugely Annoying Day

Like most bathroom ceiling fans, the Broan 678 actually attaches to ceiling joists. This means that to install it, you really want to work from above. It’s pretty darned difficult in a building like mine because there is no easy access to the attic. I knew of three possibilities:

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Real Estate

Results And Suggestions from the Energy Audit

by Brendan O'Brien | February 12, 2009

This week the energy auditors returned to take another look at my house and present their conclusions. They brought their FLIR thermal imaging camera to check along walls for gaps in insulation, and presented their conclusions and ideas for me to improve the heating efficiency of my house. It’s important to note that this was [...]

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Commentary

Landlords: We Have to Police our Own Business!

by Brendan O'Brien | October 18, 2008

Have you ever seen those polls which list different groups and industries by how much respect they get from the public? Real estate agents and used car salesmen usually rank near the bottom. And while I’ve never seen the rental property industry evaluated in any of these polls, suppose we were included? Suppose the American [...]

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Landlord Tenant

Landlords: Here’s a Long, Long List of Tenant Rules

by Brendan O'Brien | September 28, 2008

Okay, I’m not going to post all of my tenant rules here (although I will if commenters want to know). This is more about why tenants need rules, why I have many more rules than most landlords, and how I enforce rules with a minimum of pain. The TV That Woke Me Up When I [...]

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Commentary

Introducing Myself: Landlord and Tenant Specialist

by Brendan O'Brien | September 19, 2008

Hey folks. This is a guest post from Brendan O’Brien, who will be joining us from time to time and sharing his insight and wisdom about topics primarily focused on landlording. Hi to all BiggerPockets readers and members. I’m Brendan O’Brien, also known as PropertyMaster, a landlord and software developer based in New Hampshire. I [...]

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