All Forum Posts by: Anna Watkins

@Mike Watkins  - Reg Locus (aka Reggie the Plumber, will send phone# in PM).  Licensed master plumber, former Marine, good guy, lives in Pine Lake.  He's also a beginning investor (saints preserve him, he says I inspired him to buy houses!).

@David Begley  - good points about differentiating by intent (investing or living, flip or hold).  Funny to think of my neighborhood as an A, but it's true, there are 2 $800K listings within 4 houses of me, and 2 $700k new builds at the end of the street.    I've been pondering some out-of-state turnkeys, and am looking for some way to understand unknown neighborhoods from a distance.    Do you suppose the number of construction dumpsters per street is a classification key :-) ?

I'm looking for some benchmarks for figuring out how different areas in intown and near OP Atlanta are classified (A, B, C, D areas).  I bought my personal residence 'across the tracks' in the City of Decatur 20 years ago (in the crack-house era), stay away from Buckhead as much as possible, and invest in Belvedere/East Lake, so my comfort-zone might be a bit skewed off average.  I can't figure out what's B, C, & D, or how to imagine those areas in other cities I might want to invest in.

So, how would you classify Oakhurst/Winnona Park? B? C+?  @Rick Baggenstoss -- what's Midway Woods now?  What was it 7 years ago? @Todd Whiddon -- how about the Northlake neighborhoods?

How is an area like Garden Hills or Peachtree Hills in Buckhead classified?  Are they A areas?  Is there even a classification concept for the MacChateaux on Riverside Drive, or Mt. Paran Rd?

What about Belvedere Park?  I'd live there in a minute, but I'm not everybody.  My plumber said he was nervous about the area, which made me really start to wonder!  Are we in C or D territory here?

And West End/Adair Park?  How about the areas west of GA Tech but south of the newly trendy Westside. It's so spotty now, but I still don't have a feel for how they compare to "war zones."

Any rules of thumb for figuring this out on my own?   Does it translate from city to city?  Thanks!!

Happy Birthday, Josh!  Be proud of all you've accomplished since the last one :-)  Great site, great team, great contribution to thousands.  Well done!

I'm going to try to come. Count me in unless you hear otherwise! Thanks for planning it, Azeez.

Seconding what everyone else has said about interior photos -- good ones, not dark fuzzy photos like I've seen often.  Maybe even stage some of the photos with furniture or flowers.  Retake the exterior photo on a nice sunny day (or edit to be brighter), adding a couple of planters by the front door with colorful flowers would be nice.

Create a Postlet ad, and make Craigslist the primary location. A Postlet looks good, and will syndicate to Zillow, PadMapper, etc but the original listing will link back to Craigslist. I might be woefully out of date, but Craigslist is the first place I look for rentals. I think of Zillow and the MLS for buying, not renting.

Rewrite the description to create a picture of the great living tenants will enjoy in the house -- keep out of the rain when bringing groceries in from the garage?  Friends hang around while you whip up dinner in the big kitchen? Enjoy morning coffee on the sunny back deck?  Birdwatch out breakfast nook window?  Snuggle around the fire on a winter afternoon?  Two-minute drive to XYZ school?  Do be careful not to use language that will get you in trouble for preference or discrimination, though.

Drop the rent.  Think of it this way -- you've lost over $3,000 through a 3-month vacancy. That's more than TWICE what you'd lose if you dropped the rent by $100 for a whole year!  No bad houses, just bad prices??

Good luck!

@Corey Edmonds  Spinning wheels is indeed frustrating.  Is this a policy specific to this one real estate brokerage?  Or because you don't think you'll personally be available to close on the house and want an agent to do it for you?  I've not run into any situation where financing was even mentioned before we started looking at houses -- but I've always been right nearby.  Have you talked to a different RE agent/company?

My real estate agent has given permission to post her e-mail address in Bigger Pockets replies.  She works a lot with investors, owns a couple of duplexes herself, and has a property management company with about 120 units.  We live in the Decatur area but she works and manages all over the Metro area.  Michelle Hollberg,  [email protected]

Good luck!

@Jay Hinrichs - and Brie Schmidt -- Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!

>>> To that End Brie Schmidt and I have created a new website called Turnkey-review.com this site will have most of the turnkey companies in the US on it..

Ditto what Rick said -- though it's all worth hearing about, I'm going to have to take a personal morning off from the full-time job, and can't stay all day!   Count me in.

@Aly W.  -- Confirmed, my Chase statement includes the payee in the transaction line (there's also a running record in the QuickPay module, but I don't know how long it stays there.)

example -

                 Chase QuickPay Electronic Transfer ####1 from ANNA WATKINS     $9.99

If a tenant were to try to make a partial payment, I could just not accept the payment into the account.

So far, it's really nice.