All Forum Posts by: Brian Adzadi

@Mike Rose

Hopefully there are people from Lancaster, PA who can give you greater insight but after visiting Lancaster a few times myself, I don't believe it is a town you would want to invest an Airbnb in.

1. It is landlocked, there are no beaches or large lakes near which would inspire people to stay for days.

2. The attractions like Sight & Sounds and Amish country are for one day excursions.

3. You will be competing with some Bed n Breakfasts out there.

If your Airbnb was near a casino, beach, amusement park, Grand Canyon or anywhere people would want to stay for a couple of days to enjoy themselves then it would make sense. However, most of the attractions are one day exploits. Kind of not make sense to put an Airbnb there and have marginal peak seasons.  

@Chandler Calvert

Congrats on attaining your first rental my friend. Your journey to financial freedom begins here. However, I have to say, the interest rate on this house is pretty steep. Is that what interest rates for rentals going for nowadays or is there more to the story?

Anyway, the first half of your obstacle is acquiring the property. The second half is finding a good quality tenant. I used mysmartmove.com by Transunion when it came to obtaining background checks. They do criminal, eviction, and how much they make compared to your rent. Don't let someone give you "3-6 months rent in advance", you are just looking for trouble that way. Walk them to their car and see how the inside of their car looks. How they treat their car will tell you how they will treat your house.

Read up on housing discrimination laws. Make sure when you make your advertisement that you are not violating any of those laws because if someone sues you for discrimination, you will have to pay $10K in fines.

@Nicholas Carlson

You are going to need to be more detailed than that.

1) How old are you?

2) What level of experience do you have in REI?

3) Have you ever flipped a property before to do a BRRRR method

4) Are you married? Do you have young children?

5) Is your job secure?

6) Do you have a team on hand to help you with your process (real estate agent, lawyer, contractor, plumber, electrician etc.)?

@Fareed R.

For

3) Find out if the person makes 3x the rent, have him provide his last 3 paystubs and see if he could provide contact for his previous landlords. If he checks out on all 3, I don't see any reason not to rent to him.

6) Have you also tried Facebook Marketplace? I had potential tenants calling me left and right when I posted my SFR on there.

@Timothy Lyons

Welcome to the BP family. Thank you for your services. I am also an RN and spending time with my 2 daughters more is the reason why I went into REI. The only thing I have say to you for now is, figure out your real estate niche. Do you want to go into buy and hold, fix and flip, wholesaling or a mixture? Once you figure that out, things get a little easier. As newbies we tend to get over excited and want to do everything. NO. Streamline yourself so you don't complicate your life.

@Robert Redd

Don't sell yourself short my friend. You are in the field that juxtapose to RE investing. Here is my question to you. Are you good enough or experience enough of a construction worker where you can build your own house if you wanted to? If yes, then trust me you can do this.

As a construction worker you have the skillset to see and know things that the average Joe like me don't. You can see if work done on a house is up to code or not. You can rectify shoddy carpentry or shoddy plumbing without having to pay an arm and leg to contractors.

If I were in your place, I would stay with my parents or a roommate where I am paying little to no rent. I will live on rice and beans, beans and rice. Every money that I don't use to stay alive is being put away. Then, once I get up to 10K in savings, I will either buy a dilapidated house for under 10K or put a down payment on a house worth that much. I would weekend warrior it until its livable. Rent it out. Go to local bank to do a cash out refinance so to take out the increase equity you put on the house and use that money for my next flip and rent.

You are in a better position than a lot of people out there buddy. Take advantage of it. You don't need to go to college to be successful in REI.

@Terrell Garren

WOW. Thanks for your precautionary tale. We need more stories like this on Biggerpockets. Many would think this would keep those on the fence from taking a leap of faith into REI but I disagree. We need more stories like yours to know what look for and what to avoid. Thanks again.

@Calvin Smith

It all depends on how much capital you have to mitigate any calamity that will occur (Not MAY happen but WILL happen). With a single family you Murphy's Law comes at a smaller scale and you make rookie mistakes at a smaller scale. With a large Multi-family or Apartment complex it all comes ten fold.

So if you feel you have enough money to deal with those issues on a grand scale then by all means, get a Multifamily/Apartment. However, if you don't, start small with SFR, make small mistakes and learn from those small mistakes.

@Angelique F.

I am sorry to hear that your REI experience did not go the way you wanted. However, how well did you do your research and crunch your numbers before you started your journey? I am trying to understand as well, were you trying to do a BRRRR strategy, a flip or an actual rental?

@Shawn Randolph

Craigslist, Facebook marketplace and hanging up flyers around the college and its dorms would be your best FREE way of advertising to students.