All Forum Posts by: Arlan Potter

ny to Katy Texas.  Talk about a change in culture, weather. Good stuff.

I have had many realtors bring me deals over the years. 

I do not do a lot of business with realtors who are also investors. I don't oppose them nor dislike them, but iit always seemed to be somewhat of a conflict of interest. If they find a real deal, they will keep it for themselves.  My realtor whose does not also invest always brings me the great deals.

the real deal will be when I give a long term tenant the house. Of course the real long term tenant is hard to find, haven't had too many, but there are a couple. When a person pays for a cheap house over and over and then they retire, and I think they can or will keep it(pay the taxes, pay the insurance, maintain the house) they might get a gift.  I have some real cheap houses that the older women have already paid me in rent what I paid for the house 2 or 3 times. When they retire, I will not continue to charge them rent. May be Better to just deed it to them. Or maybe just give them a life estate. Or just charge them a $1.00 per year. Or just enough to pay the taxes and insurance.  Something. Be a blessing to them.  

when I get all my SFR rentals paid off, the first thing I will do is to start giving away a gift certificate for a months free rent. It has to be random so no one expects it. It is the least I can do since they are the ones who paid for my properties. I may not do it much, but I will have contact with some of my tenants and just want to help one for no real reason.

I have also thought about:

carrying around gift certificates for a local restaurant to hand out at random.

Having a summer pizza party at one of my small quads

Welcome pack for new tenants

don't rent to family or friends.  If you do you will quite possibly lose your freinds, and/or kill your relative.  It is not worth it.  Too much to lose.

buy it, fix it, sell it    Or buy it , fix it, rent it

I would check out the Millionaire Possibilities meetup.  A great meetup with a bunch of investors or wannabes

The profit percentages are better on cheap houses.

Jon,

In my experience, if the flip margins are thin, I don't flip.

I used to do a lot of flips and made decent profits, but after a while I decided that I could make same money in one year renting a property instead of selling it.  Plus with no possibility of losing money on a flip(it can and does happen regardless of what is shown on TV)

So what do you want.  The profit of a flip or the same profit year after year?

i started with a $2900.00 house. Used the money from paychecks and zero interest credit cards to fix up.  Find a cheap house that you can fix up. Find a landlord that will sell you a fixer upper at a "fair" rent to own deal.(with a real contract and note).

There are landlords out there that just want out. 

Get them to owner finance.(with a real contract and note). You fix it up and get it rented. Or sell it for the ARV and make some profit to plow into the next deal.

I had a small cracker box of a house one time that I got thrown in with another deal. I wasn't excited about rehabbing the small house so I sold it on a "fair" rent to own. 60 payments of $250.00. Great for me, good for them. They rehabbed it and made a nice home for themselves. I turned basically zero into $15000.

Just make sure you get fair terms. I have seen a lot of unfair rent to own terms out there.