All Forum Posts by: Alecia Loveless

@Kent Ford Be aware of the property taxes in Texas. Ask to look at 3-4 years worth of taxes before deciding on your property. This will show trends and help you see the bigger picture.

My family has 2 portfolios in the area north of DFW. Their taxes have increased dramatically over the past 4 years, 150-200% increase across the board.

They are lawyers so can appeal through the whole process essentially for free. They have received extremely nominal amounts of relief on over 20 houses they’ve researched and comped to get an abatement.

This has significantly reduced the cash flow across both portfolios.

@James Mays In my market there’s usually little to no negotiation on repairs found in the inspection.

I just walked away from a deal where a duplex had 3 electrical panels and one had a giant fuse in it. My insurance company said they wouldn’t cover the policy with the fuse.

I requested the seller upgrade the electric panel. He refused. The property sat on the market another 3 months and eventually sold for $25,000 less than I was under contract for.

My realtor and my contractor both felt that if he was refusing to upgrade the panel it was likely an indication that he had done shoddy work on the rehab or had something to hide.

I could have bought it and arranged to upgrade the panel on Day 1 after we closed but I didn’t feel good enough about taking the risk on a $280,000 deal in the event there was a problem and I had to try to make a claim prior to the repair.

Most of the repairs on your inspection report wouldn’t even phase me as I have a team in place that goes in and repairs everything following closing.

No house is perfect. There will always be things that turn up.

@Jordan Sachs I feel that $3000 is short money for an easy fix to the problem.

To me it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to go after the other person or worth the potential liability of it happening again and possibly hurting someone.

Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish. Sometimes there’s just maintenance costs with owning rentals. Now is one of those times for you.

@Sidra Amir I have a needy tenant that comments on EVERYTHING we do at the property from small maintenance issues to having large pieces of equipment onsite for projects.

I finally told this tenant to please refrain from texting or calling about things that weren’t maintenance issues or issues with their unit.

It has helped considerably but isn’t perfect.

@Errol Sadler Check out the cost to do this in the Florida market. Where I live for the cost of doing so it is cheaper to buy new multi family 2-4 units and then earn 3X-4X the rents for the same cost.

@Makan A Tabrizi Check with your insurance as I’m not allowed to have gas stoves or ovens. The insurance company says it’s too much of a fire hazard.

I do try to get a full size stove and ovens in any unit possible as opposed to the smaller apartment sized ones.

My tenants all love having a washer and dryer. It’s a huge renting point and can help you get bigger rents.

In small spaces I have occasionally put stackable ones. If you get front loading units tell each tenant not to overload the washer because it will cause the seal to give and make the unit leak. I learned this the hard way personally and had to get mine repaired. I told subsequent tenants this once I moved out of that unit and have never have had a problem since.

@Luke Tetreault I like Jonathan Greenes advice to rank your properties and then figure out what makes the most sense.

That being said real estate investing is typically a long game and with just 2 years under your belt you’ve just started.

Most of my units only cash flow a little bit but because I bought smart and have renovated wisely there’s not much maintenance and very little time-suck for me.

I won’t try to tell you what to do other than if there’s certain properties that just consume way more energy you might consider 1031ing them into slightly larger properties where you could get better economies of scale for your time and expenses.

The one thing I will say is that in reading a lot and watching a lot of podcasts the one thing a lot of the more prominent investors who have 500 plus units say is that the one thing they regret is the deals they flipped early for cheap profit or the deals that they sold and did not keep. I have heard this 7-10 times and Brandon Turner has said he regrets not keeping more of his early deals. And he’s involved in over 13,000 units now.

@Joe S. I can see both sides of the coin.

My Ex and I were together 20 years but not married. When we split up the actual assets were mine. After that length of time I felt my Ex deserved a portion of what had been accumulated. When all was said and done I probably gave my Ex about 40% of my net worth.

I have been with my new partner 7 years and we’ve been discussing marriage for 6 of them. However during those years I have accumulated several properties worth about 8X what I had with my Ex.

While I’m willing to have joint properties going forward and look forward to building our financial future together I will be getting a prenup before we tie the knot.

@Devin James Reading is the habit that changed my life.

Almost any time I want to learn something new I can locate a book or two or three on the subject and spend very little money to broaden my horizons.

The second habit that has helped me track my finances is that I’ve created a personal spreadsheet that I fill out at least once a month that tracks certain financial metrics I’m interested in comparing. Specifically I now track month end account balances, maintenance expenses and have a detailed list at my fingertips of the tenants that are late on their rents.

I’ve found keeping this data in a spreadsheet is more useful than trying to sift through P&Ls from QBO.

@Cole Farrell I will disagree. I feel that any investment that makes financial sense according to your goals is a good place to start.

I bought a SFR and then shortly after a duplex. I bought a few more duplexes and graduated into larger deals.

I will agree that 4 unit owner occupied is a great way to go if you can manage it. I would do this every 12-15 months if my spouse wasn’t totally opposed to moving frequently. It would totally help me ramp up my portfolio and grow much faster if I could put 3.5-5% down as opposed to 20%.