The other day, someone emailed to ask: “What cap rates do you look for when you buy a rental?” It seems like a simple question, but it’s impossible to answer. There’s no magic number that...

We all know that being a landlord is a 24-hour job. And we also know that — according to Murphy’s Law — anything that can go wrong will, and if a series of events go wrong, they will do so in th...

Imagine: You’re a beginner real estate investor. You want to flip a house for the first time. You don’t have much money. Someone recommends that you get a Home Depot or Lowe’s credit car...

Before I ever bought a property, I thought that my landlords set the rent through some type of irrefutable science. I never questioned how they came up with the numbers. I took it as a given: Th...

One of my blog readers emailed me to ask: “What do you think of owning out-of-state rental property? I live in WA state, and inspired by your blog posts, I am looking for rent...

I recently left the country for a week, headed to a place where I literally had no phone service and limited access to email. That wasn’t a one-time-only event. I plan to do it again at the end ...

I have a full-time job, outside of real estate. I suppose you could say that real estate is my “side hustle.” Some people have side businesses doing consulting or freelance work. My side busines...

A friend of mine is having a dilemma about what to do with one of his rental properties. He asked me for advice, and I thought I should float the question to all of you. Here’s his situat...

How nice should you make your rental properties? Imagine that it’s time to renovate or improve your properties, and you need to make some choices. Do you buy the cheapest Project Source b...

When I first became a landlord, I assumed that multi-unit properties would generally be the best investments. I imagined myself exclusively owning triplexes and quad-plexes. But as the ye...

A few months ago, I was watching a horror movie on my laptop. (I think it was Paranormal Activity II). Several scary scenes within that movie take place in the kitchen. The audience gets a prolo...

I keep a rent escalation clause in my leases. It states that the rent will rise by 3 percent each year, to keep pace with inflation. When I wrote it, I had every intention of enforcing it...