All Forum Posts by: Blake Elder

Good morning,

My wife and I live in a 4-plex that we bought about 1 year ago. Our plan is to continue to purchase 4-plexes in the future. We bought the first one with an owner occupied FHA loan just in her name, and plan to do that again this year with an owner occupied FHA loan in my name. As we look forward to the future, I don't know many people that own more than 4 4-plexes. It seems that at a certain point, successful investors shift their focus to apartment complexes, or get into commercial type investments. My question to you more experienced investors is twofold.

1. Do you own more than 4 multifamily properties (4plex or less)?

2. If you used to, and have since switched your strategy, when was the tipping point for you? At what point did the new strategy make sense? 

Thanks for your help and input on this. I live in an area where there is an abundance of multifamily properties. They are in high demand, so there isn't an abundance of them available, but it is a viable product in our market. Thanks!

Real Estate investing is totally shaping my life and the lives of those around me. It scares me to death to think about the older people in our society that have to work to pay their bills but can't make it. I want to be a good steward of the time that I have been given so I can spend time pouring into others. Real Estate investing has and will allow me and my family that in the future! It's not about the $ it makes this year, it's about the $ it makes in 20 years!

Haha very nice Sam!

Marcia,

Thanks for the response. This was very helpful! After reviewing 10 or so more applications, we have finally found someone who we believe will be a good tenant! Thanks for the help!

Good evening! I have been a bigger pockets member for awhile, and my wife and I recently purchased our first investment property. It has 7 units and we are in the process of filling two of the units. I have a twofold question for our landlord crowd out there. Please don't be shy with responses!

1. We have used the Mysmartmove website to do our applications, and we appreciate this, but it seems necessary do do some additional supplemental information gathering as well. For example, length of employment, and other info that we would love to have on file. We appreciate that this website pulls the credit report, and it lets the tenant fill it all out online. We are capable of searching criminal background, and I feel like if we we could pull credit history somewhere that we would be fairly self sufficient without the mysmartmove site. Does anyone have other recommendations for ways that they do this?

2.  What has been your experience with renting to convicted felons? One part of me  wants to give people a chance, but the other part of me can only imagine the worst, and foresee other tenants moving out after finding out their neighbor previously served time for stealing an airplane while assaulting people with explosives and stolen guns. (you get the idea) I want to be fair, but also want to make sure I protect our other tenants. Any advise or stories?