All Forum Posts by: Bryan Devitt
Bryan Devitt has started 4 posts and replied 789 times.
Post: What are valid reasons to increase rent on tenants

- Contractor
- Oxford, MA
- Posts 806
- Votes 744
If you do not raise the rents then the tenants will be pissed when you finally do. I had a conversation with a friend the other day because her neighbor moved. She is paying $700, next door went up to $850. She said her landlord better not raise her rent because she's been there so long. I explained about cost increased every year for him and the old neighbors destroying the place that costs money to redo for the next people, she said that's his problem not hers and that is the risk he takes owning a building. She has lived there for years and never had an increase, so now she feels like he's never allowed to increase it. If he increased it even $25/month over the last 4 years, he would still be below market rent (market is $900-950) but he would have trained her to expect an increase every year instead of being pissed when it does happen. So even if you only increase it the small amount that your costs go up, increase it. Even if it's $10, do it. Having tenants is like having kids, they need to be trained to expect and not expect certain things for the relationship to work
Post: Need Advise on Money Pit - Should I Sell As Is?

- Contractor
- Oxford, MA
- Posts 806
- Votes 744
Remember that there are never failures, just a series of learning experiences that make you better each time you learn a new one. I am glad you're moving forward with the project, good luck with it.
Post: Using my skills to build new multi family projects

- Contractor
- Oxford, MA
- Posts 806
- Votes 744
So you're mad because the bank won't hand you $1.5M to build something that you have no money into because you tell them it will have equity when it's done? I can't even get a mortgage for a flip from a bank with that logic. If you don't want to give up equity in "your" deal that is essentially just an idea and knowledge of how to make wood boxes people can live in, try to find a hard money lender that will finance it. If you can't, it's because the deal and/or you aren't panning out
Post: House flipping mentorship program.

- Contractor
- Oxford, MA
- Posts 806
- Votes 744
No! Hell no! and in case you didn't understand that NOOOOOOO!!!!! You obviously haven't spent much time on here because there are MANY threads about these courses being absolutely useless or close to. Dedicate the same amount of time that course was going to take and read these forums and you will know more than most flippers in your area in 6 months
Post: Agent Struggles - Friends Using Other Agents - Advice?

- Contractor
- Oxford, MA
- Posts 806
- Votes 744
I have friends that are part time and I won't use them, I also rarely them advice though. Part time tells me they dabble in it as a hobby and to make money on the side, would you hire a guy who does construction on the side to rehab a house? As for them asking questions, tell them you don't want to step on their agents toes and they should talk to their agent about it. If they ask you questions, you're obviously in their mind, they just don't want to use you. Constantly posting about being an agent or asking for work will just get you blocked on social media and uninvited to parties for being annoying. If you want to keep your friends, stop thinking about how much money you should be making off of them and keep them separate from business unless they hire you.
Post: Need Advise on Money Pit - Should I Sell As Is?

- Contractor
- Oxford, MA
- Posts 806
- Votes 744
IMO never sell when it isn't completed, the premium you pay for the work that isn't done yet is very high. You'd be lucky to break even at this point but with a small amount of money left you can finish and still turn a small profit.
Post: Newbie, what is the best city for a multifamily investment?

- Contractor
- Oxford, MA
- Posts 806
- Votes 744
All of them if you know what you're doing. This is like walking into a bar and asking "what should I drink?" or walking into Cheese Cake Factory and asking what you should eat. There are entirely too many variables for anyone to give you a simple answer to a seriously complicated question. Even when you answer all the relevant questions (how much do you have to invest, how much do you want to be involved, how much risk are you willing to take, what do you expect for a return, how much babysitting do you want to do, etc) there will still be 50 difference answers because this is a pretty big country with a lot of people raking it in and a lot more losing money, sometimes when they're neighbors. The city matters much less than the building, your effort and the team you put into place.
Post: House flip gone horribly wrong. Need advise.

- Contractor
- Oxford, MA
- Posts 806
- Votes 744
You are entirely too far gone now to get any good news out of this. See if you can build a duplex to try and get more money out of it and maybe break even. Find a new contractor, yours screwed you. Any contractor that just talks you into tearing down a house and rebuilding it without permits is a hack and he did it to get more work out of you or they're an idiot. Both mean you lose. If you need to use them to finish, find someone competent to be a baby sitter. For future reference, if you're this inexperienced, don't do additions of any sort. Find a pig, put on lipstick and move up one step at a time to do additions and full renovations. There are too many variables (as you know) that will cause massive losses. I could beat you up on how you got here but with losing that much money I am sure you know your mistakes and won't make them again.
Post: 25% flipping tax??? Not cool.

- Contractor
- Oxford, MA
- Posts 806
- Votes 744
Originally posted by @Edward R.:
is this propsal and EXTRA 25% on top of the capital gains? I'm not too concerned as I doubt any such tax would ever go through. They have been trying to implement stock purchases/transaction tax for years, never happened. Democrats always looking out for the poor and giving handouts when in fact they are stifling them. NY Gov Cuomo just eneacted new Tenants rights; what a fiasco. No more 3-day quit. a tenant can stay in the property for nearly 3 months for free and trash the place. so lets protect them. So now this is likely going to reduce space for those in need because landlords will be less likely to rent to them, raise rents as well. (oh they also say rent can't be raised more than a certain % like 2-3 for a new lease.
Yes, this would be a 25% tax on the profit of the flip (which we all know we can play with those numbers with LLCs, so this is a useless proposal really. So if you made $40k on a flip, you have to pay $10k to the government as a flipping tax. At the end of the year or quarter you would then need to pay your normal taxes of probably another $10k. So you get $20k and the government gets $20k. This is just a race to who can claim to steal the most money and give it away to the most people for their votes
Post: Property Backs up to A Water Treatment Plant

- Contractor
- Oxford, MA
- Posts 806
- Votes 744
As stated above, water treatment could be find, poop treatment is a hell no. There is one on a major road a ways away from us and on a good day you never smell a thing, on a bad day it smells like you're driving through a field of dog crap after it rained for 1/2 mile.