Rent To Retirement Review
Hi BP! I recently just closed on my first 3 turnkey homes with Rent To Retirement after being referred to them from a colleague of mine who had invested with them for a few years now. I thought I would start a forum to let others share their experiences, and to keep a log of how my experience is going since I see a lot of people asking questions about working with them. So far I've had a great experience. Communication is very important to me! I worked with Zach who is very responsive, knowledgeable, and willing to assist throughout the process as I was new to purchasing out of state. All my homes are rented, and I'm off to the races in building my passive income portfolio! They put me in touch with lenders to finance the properties that had better rates & fees than any other lender I checked with, which was great. They also had recommendations for insurance providers, and referral for a legal team to assist in setting up my LLC, which I am currently working on. Overall the closing process was very smooth, and did not take up a ton of my time. This was exactly what I was looking for since I still work my full time job. I've done a few flips in the past, which was a huge time commitment & definitely more headache than I cared for. Not to mention I lost money on some of my past flips or barely broke even. I got discouraged with real estate after the long and stressful time of trying to flip real estate on my own while balancing my full time job & family life. So I was very relieved in how easy they made this process to invest in cash flowing properties where the returns were significantly better than anything I found locally, and the process is much more passive! I look forward to continuing to invest with them in the future! I'll share more updates as I grow my portfolio. Big thanks to Rent to Retirement for getting me back into the game of real estate investing where I'm not doing everything on my own!
@Diana Jing
hi Did you use the private loan they recommend?
I know you Run you’re independent numbers but how far off are they with there cap rates?
@Timothy Stripto generally I would say numbers are fairly accurate, but with all real estate there is some variance. We have over 10 properties now (most through RTR). The majority of them perform as expected. A couple do better than expected as they've rented out higher than expected & have had nice rent increases year after year. We did have one property where a tenant had lost their job where we had about a 2.5 month vacancy to get them out, repair and release, but that is performing well now. I would say that is the only property that has underperformed projections. Otherwise we are very happy, and plan to buy more. Appreciation has been higher on almost all properties than we expected over just a couple of years allowing us to 1031 into more properties in a short period of time. That was a nice surprise!
THX for the information Diana
Im curious how much is usually required for turnkey? Im brand new to real estate and figured out of state turn key would be the best way to go.
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- Rental Property Investor
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#3 Ask About A Real Estate Company Contributor
- Rental Property Investor
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@Connor Amato You should typically need around $20k to $30k as a min for down payment and reserves depending on the property purchase. Feel free to reach out with any questions.
Stay far away from Rent to Retirement!!!! The only reason we went through them for our new build is because they're mentioned on this website and thought they had to be reputable. WRONG! One year later, still no permits, and just raised the price of our home by 20%! What's more is that they don't guarantee they won't raise the price AGAIN by the time they build it out. God knows when that will happen, already been exactly a year and still no permit supposedly. S C A M! You've been warned.
This is a fake post from a fake account. This person has never had any communication with RTR, nor done business with RTR to any capacity. This account was created moments prior to making this post. We are taking steps with BP to investigate this.
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Real Estate Agent
- Rent To Retirement
- 816-885-2783
- https://renttoretirement.com/
- [email protected]
Quote from @Diana Jing:Thank you for sharing your experience. Are you still continuing to buy under todays market? Do you have any multifamily in your portfolio? Why and why not? I see you bought a few new built. Do you have any older homes? If so, which ones perform better? How’s their portfolio management? Are you only investing in FL or other places as well?
Sure, feel free to PM me! We're in the process of purchasing some new builds in FL with RTR that we are very excited about. The first one appraised well over what we are buying it at!!!
thanks!
Quote from @Athena Tong:Also there are other similar companies like REI. Have you dealt with any of them?
Quote from @Diana Jing:Thank you for sharing your experience. Are you still continuing to buy under todays market? Do you have any multifamily in your portfolio? Why and why not? I see you bought a few new built. Do you have any older homes? If so, which ones perform better? How’s their portfolio management? Are you only investing in FL or other places as well?
Sure, feel free to PM me! We're in the process of purchasing some new builds in FL with RTR that we are very excited about. The first one appraised well over what we are buying it at!!!
thanks!
@Athena Tong I used both Rent to Retirement and also purchased a property with a company called JWB. Happy to discuss pros & cons from my experience with you privately if you want to message me.
Hi!
Does anyone have any recent experiences with Rent to Retirement that they can share? I have heard a lot about the pros, I want to know if anyone has something they DIDN'T like... to get a better idea of what I may get into. I am looking into out of state investing. Thank you!
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#3 Ask About A Real Estate Company Contributor
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@Michael Ullman just shared a recent experience where things didn't go exactly according to plan, but also gave good feedback on how RTR stayed involved to resolve the issue when it occurred. If you look through many of the threads on this site you will see a great deal reviews showing full experiences that encountered obstacles, but more importantly, how we stayed involved to resolve the issue when those issues came up. REI will always have obstacles in one fashion or another. The true test of a company is how they interact & stay engaged to resolve those issues, which we always try to do to the best of our ability! Feel free to reach out if you would like more specific examples or references. Here is a link to Michael's recent review: https://www.biggerpockets.com/...
Feel free to reach out to me with any questions. Happy to help.
Quote from @Diana Jing:Diana, it has been over a year since your had your first build with RTR, and you mentioned having more houses with them. Would you mind giving us an update on how that is going? :)
@Elsie Q. we completed our first build and actually had a tenant lined up before the house was even completed. So we had zero downtime in renting it once completed. The rent projected on it was $1,850, but they actually rented it out for $2,050 which was a big win for us! The value on appraisal also came back much higher than expected. So overall we are very happy. The build took a bit longer than expected, but I think that is the case everywhere right now with material delays. We actually went under contract to do two more builds with RTR after seeing how well this first one performed. I wish we had more capital to do more!
Also, a question for you, and for everyone else ... with new build or turnkey properties, how do you scale? Don't you have to leave your down payment on it? Let's say I have about $200k to invest ... In my area, I could use that to buy a $140k home, put $40k in repairs, + $10-20k in closing/holding costs/etc. Ideally, the house would appraise for $250k, and I would be able to do a 80% cash out refi to get all the money back and repeat the process (the famous Brrrr).
But with turnkey/new build, the appraisal will probably not be always higher than the price you paid (I'm guessing with new builds, it might, but with turnkey, it probably won't) so you can't do a refi. So, let's say the down payment for a turnkey is $40k ... with my $200k, I can do only 5 of those and then done?
I'm very interested in working with RTR (or another turnkey/build-to-rent provider), I just don't see how to scale if we can't refi right away or a handful of months later to take our down payment back and repeat the process.
Juliana,
That's a good point. Scalability can be tricky without huge equity. However, in the area, RTR is offering, equities for new constructions are more than 6-figure, so you can cash out refinance to buy more properties. I am doing the same. Happy to discuss the details.
--Ruchit
Quote from @Juliana Molina:
Quote from @Diana Jing:Diana, it has been over a year since your had your first build with RTR, and you mentioned having more houses with them. Would you mind giving us an update on how that is going? :)
@Elsie Q. we completed our first build and actually had a tenant lined up before the house was even completed. So we had zero downtime in renting it once completed. The rent projected on it was $1,850, but they actually rented it out for $2,050 which was a big win for us! The value on appraisal also came back much higher than expected. So overall we are very happy. The build took a bit longer than expected, but I think that is the case everywhere right now with material delays. We actually went under contract to do two more builds with RTR after seeing how well this first one performed. I wish we had more capital to do more!
Also, a question for you, and for everyone else ... with new build or turnkey properties, how do you scale? Don't you have to leave your down payment on it? Let's say I have about $200k to invest ... In my area, I could use that to buy a $140k home, put $40k in repairs, + $10-20k in closing/holding costs/etc. Ideally, the house would appraise for $250k, and I would be able to do a 80% cash out refi to get all the money back and repeat the process (the famous Brrrr).
But with turnkey/new build, the appraisal will probably not be always higher than the price you paid (I'm guessing with new builds, it might, but with turnkey, it probably won't) so you can't do a refi. So, let's say the down payment for a turnkey is $40k ... with my $200k, I can do only 5 of those and then done?
I'm very interested in working with RTR (or another turnkey/build-to-rent provider), I just don't see how to scale if we can't refi right away or a handful of months later to take our down payment back and repeat the process.
Juliana,
That's a good point. Scalability can be tricky without huge equity. However, in the area, RTR is offering, equities for new constructions are more than 6-figure, so you can cash out refinance to buy more properties. I am doing the same. Happy to discuss the details.
--Ruchit
I'm happy to share our philosophy on building a portfolio and scaling it over time. We actually started down the path of flipping homes. We flipped about 8 properties before we decided to transition more into the TK space of buying OOS to be more passive. I agree that your numbers on the brrr model make sense in theory, but the reality that we found is that sourcing, rehabbing and trying to sell or refinance properties ourselves while still working a full time job was not the right fit for us. All the rehab deals we had took significantly longer than expected, costed more in rehab, bank refinances did not necessarily go as planned, contractors burned us in various ways, property mngt was a nightmare, etc. So ultimately we determined that the brrr model was not as successful for us as it turned into another full time job (probably more hours than our regular job). Ultimately it took longer than we expected, the numbers never panned out & it was WAY more stress than we anticipated. Not to say that it can't be done successfully, but I think for the newer investor or investor that is not wanting to take on a full time, high risk/high stress job with great variability in results, this is likely not the best place to start. Once we came to this conclusion on what the right path was for us, we decided to go the TK route to easily diversify into markets that we wanted to invest in outside of our local market. This allowed us to scale easier over time & have much less time/stress involved in building our portfolio. This was the right approach for us as we wanted to build a portfolio of rentals to supplement our retirement. We were not looking for a way to buy ourselves another immediate job like we did with flipping/brrrr. We are very happy still with how things are going, and very happy with Rent To Retirement. Their systems, professionalism, communication & ability to resolve issues that arise when they come up is above anyone else in the industry in my opinion. If you do some research on this site, you will see a tremendous amount of positive reviews about them & I've shared more details about my specific experience on this thread.
To your last point about how to scale with TK, it really comes down to being creative in what markets you are investing in and how you are going about it. Regardless if the property is a TK or regular rental you are buying from a seller, you scale by investing in the right locations that have strong cash flow and strong appreciation. If you can create some value add with increasing rents or minor rehab, that may be a good niche. You can also bring in partners to have the ability to buy more rentals than you can on your own. Brrr and tk are not the only ways of investing either. We've done some STRs and creative financing deals as well at this point, but those also take a bit more time involved as well. I would like to point out that one of our new builds we did with RTR ended up with over $100K of immediate equity that we were able to cash out refi to pull all of our money out of the deal to reinvest. This was like a brrr, but with new construction that we did not have to do a lot of the work for. This helped us scale much quicker than if we did not invest in this project. The project did take much longer than expected, but the end results also turned out much better than we initially planned for. This strategy comes with some more risk & involvement, but can be a creative way in the TK space to scale quicker.
Ultimately I think it comes down to being honest about the level of time, risk, energy/stress & capital you want to invest & then determine which direction to invest in based on that criteria. TK is a great way to build your confidence with a few rentals in great markets, especially if you have limited experience or new to a market. Hope this all helps to answer your questions.