All Forum Posts by: Bogdan Cirlig

Definitely great answers. The biggest issue with m2m is you will incur the advertising expense, deal with vacancy, get property ready again for rent. That's an overhead you want to incur as seldom as possible.

Depending on who you renting to (not race but asset class) a break clause might mean nothing to those that are hard to collect after / low income and care less of their credit. Normally, in a 1 year lease the tenant is responsible for FULL TERM and the way I write up my leases is to write the whole amount (mo rent x 12) as the amount they signed up for.

If they break the lease, and it's ok with you, they will pay rent until you put a tenant in. In most states the law says you must be very diligent to secure a new tenant.

I second that. My company is pulling a LOT of rentals to crunch the numbers (about 1 Million per day) and very very few are ever from any MLS. Rentals generally live on Craigslist :). True fact. Apartments live on few other sites as well. My property managers love to advertise the vacancies on Trulia (in favor of Craigslist lol). Agents do put rentals in MLS because it costs them (almost) nothing but unless it's a high end executive rental, you will generally find that a great chunk of renters hunt for houses themselves, and renters + MLS can't mix due to how MLS'es are setup to operate.

Do a one time non refundable Pet fee per pet (i.e. $500/pp). Don't call it "deposit" or so because you are dropping into "deposit regulations" bucket. The pet really doesn't use more heat or water or anything else to go through the pain of monthly rent. Also if they do damage, you're already covered by the fact it's non refundable PLUS you will use the tenant's regular deposit to cover.

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Well, renting to coeds is fun and lucrative, BUT, there are caveats:

- if you live in same place, you will have to put up with the parties and overall coed life, come home at 2am or so. I have seen this work well if the occupants are generally friends and share activities.

- there will be damage to your property :). Those carpets won't last as per their normal "replacement life", so you should account for higher than usual wear & tear

- the general saying "yo, get yourselves a room" means it's your place, so you should not have a problem with the "noise" at times and be ready to vacate the place for few hours just because that's what good roommates do for each other when necessity strikes :)

- "regulating" the place aka (no parties, no nasties, lights off by 11pm etc) means you will have no fun place for easy going coeds, and generally it will make it a "dork house", which is ok, but again, birds of feather stick together, you will have to match all occupants (they will match themselves too anyway), you get the gist.

Well, I have Liberty Mutual and I have a"rental rider" on my homeowners policy. This works up until 5-8 or so depending on each insurance company policy. But, do buy an Umbrella Liability.. for $1MM it costs barely $200/year.

LL is expensive and definitely worth it but if you go over the number and are considered "commercial" from the insurer's perspective.

If you can provide an address or cross streets and property type/beds/ba/sqft I can run a free report for you.

tl;dr; on the above (all great info) one thing to keep in mind: In general, Mobile homes don't appreciate :) so you will have to rent to cover all expenses and have a positive NOI by a mile to make it worthwhile and make sure you make more than minimum hourly wage vs your invested time in the whole operation.

I have a friend of mine buying hot near Baltimore and she's rolling about 30 properties so far. I'm talking to her weekly to compare notes and she's complaining she is limited by the leverage she can have with the cash at hand to buy more of those.

I can hook you up she is a Realtor too licensed in MD/VA/DC.

PS: Buy local your first deal. You will learn a TON from the first one and there's no amount of books to teach you what your money on the line can teach. Also find a reliable property manager unless you want to be the Landlord there (nice idea for first one, but the novelty wears out quick after few run-ins with tenants).

My $0.02 and also as Trevor said, if they are vacant, there must be a reason and usually it's not a good one. That's a red flag that the area is not livable. Check crime and boarded properties on that block and see how many are being advertised as vacant and monitor for few weeks if those vacancies fill up or not. Don't buy a dead asset.