All Forum Posts by: Annchen Knodt

Hi @Deone Doctors, You mentioned that flood insurance was a nasty surprise.  Since I went through that myself recently, I wanted to chime in and ask whether you'd explored options through private insurance companies. My first quote from state farm was through the roof because they were going through the NFIP. I ended up purchasing through a private company called Argenia for a small fraction of the original quote, and my lender was satisfied with that. Might not be the answer for everyone but wanted to throw that out there.

Otherwise I agree with Jaysen that if you have your numbers right this sounds like a good find!  Hope it works out well for you.

Hi @Marlon Lemond, another thought is that your county might have a publicly accessible database that you can pull absentee owners from yourself (mine does).  Might take a couple steps to whittle down the data to absentee owners and helps to have some programming knowledge, but that's an option if you're looking to save money on the list.  But if you have money more than time, buying the list is probably the way to go!

Congrats, @Gregory Schwartz!

Hi @Julian Gonda, congrats on getting started in REI!

After we learned more, we came to the conclusion that these types of software generally aren't the best use of money / time - it seems they are mainly designed to profit off of aspiring investors that are looking for an "easy" way to find deals and don't know enough to recognize that the information they provide has generally low value.  For example, we found that lots of the data we saw in RESS seemed to be pretty out-of-date, and realized that we would do much better going straight to the courthouse and connecting with people who could help us get straight to the source of the data.

We are operating in a smaller town in Texas, so it could be that it's more useful in your area, but just my two cents!  @Tom Knodt was the one working more directly with the software, so he may have something to add.

Definitely connecting with people in your specific area and learning what works there will get you so much farther than any of these software packages!

Definitely!  I think in most situations you should be able to bring in a contractor to get some estimates before making an offer.  Unless you have a LOT of experience with flipping / estimating costs yourself, you'll definitely want to get estimates to make sure the numbers work for you.

Congrats on your hard-earned success @Matthew Christman, and thanks for sharing the story!

I think the #1 piece of advice is to address the issue ASAP, because it becomes more difficult with each passing day.  

Hopefully the lease your tenant/housemate signed includes some wording that would make this a violation, and you can point that out.  Otherwise, hopefully they are at least reasonable and you can come to an agreement.  I've lived in a shared house for 7 years, and would think that if your lease doesn't cover the situation and the boyfriend stays, a fair agreement between housemates would be for him to pay an equal share of utilities and that you should collect at least 50% more rent from your tenant/housemate who is now a couple.

Hi @Hyung ku Kim, it sounds like a potential issue might be that you are attracting the wrong type of prospect with your advertising... i.e., you are getting folks that are looking for a less formal arrangement (who i can imagine might gravitate towards a room-in-a-house situation), and who are then scared away by a thorough application.  You of course don't want this type of tenant anyways!  Do you include some details on the application requirements in your ad?  

You might also want to consider looking for other places to advertise. For example, if you are connected to a local university in any way that would allow you to post on their lists, that would be a great source of potential tenants.  Perhaps other folks more experienced in property management can chime in with similar sources of good tenants.

Good luck!!

Hi @Andres Vanegas, I'd think that you'd primarily be interested in the returns you'll be getting on your money once you have stabilized the property into long-term financing.  This is of course assuming that you have a solid plan to ensure that you're successfully able to get out of the hard money in time, etc, and weather any issues until that point.

Hi @Robert Sadra, probably the best course of action would be talking to an attorney about what would be most appropriate for your specific situation and goals. If your primary motivation for creating an LLC is asset protection, then maybe an umbrella insurance policy is all you need (especially if, at least for the time being, you only own one or two rental properties). I'd think that putting your money towards a local attorney that you can have a relationship with would be more valuable than Legal Zoom, but I don't know too much about the level of service they provide.