All Forum Posts by: Cassi Justiz

I will typically do a $50/month discount for a two year lease. (It ends up being about a 3-5% discount. These are generally $1100-$1300/month rentals).
Depending on your price point, I would definitely consider a small rent reduction to keep them for another two years. Especially given the current economic market.  

If you can refi and still cashflow, then I would go for it.
But you should consider how stable your tenants are and what your loan to value and debt to income ratio is going to be. Many banks are increasing their requirements for lending and decreasing the amount they are lending on, so it's really going to be based on your specific situation. 

You could read books on real estate, find other investors in your area and do zoom chats or calls with them, or you could always spend that extra hour analyzing deals. 

There are also a lot of REIAs and groups that are now hosting their meet ups online. If you could find a few REIAs to attend into each week, that would be a fantastic use of time. 

There really isn't a con to having your license as an investor. The only big con would be the expense associated with acquiring and maintaining a license. You are also held to certain standards and have to disclose that you are licensed when buying/selling property.
 As far as the cost, it can vary pretty drastically by state and brokerage. In my area it's usually at least $2k for first year expenses and $2-$3k per year to maintain depending on the brokerage expenses. If you aren't doing at least a couple of deals a year or working with other clients, having your license may actually end up costing you more than you benefit from. 

I also would never recommend a new investor get a license without getting at least a property or two first. You don't want to go through the effort of getting your license only to realize you don't like real estate at all. 

Are you paying for this property in cash or will you be financing? If your job is uncertain, you should see if there is any provision that will allow you out for something of that nature. If you are financing, you may have a financing contingency that has a provision that should you be unable to secure financing you can get escrow money back.

You should also go ahead and talk to your agent (if you are using one) or the seller. People are being a little more reasonable right now due to the current situation. In my market, not being able to close on time is not a reason to get earnest money returned, but inability to get financing *even up to closing* will allow almost always allow buyer to get earnest money back.

Hi @Justin Young, 

Welcome to BP! It's a bit harder to connect with everyone right now since there aren't any in-person meet-ups happening. But I would go ahead and get on the email lists now and as they do virtual meet-ups you at least hop in on the conversations.

Here is a link to a lot of the different meet-ups that are hosted by @Ron Harris and his wife. They provide a lot of value to new investors, so definitely get plugged in to those groups.   
https://www.renascentmastermind.com/new-events

You can find a few more groups on meetup.com. There are also several pretty active facebook groups for OKC/Oklahoma real estate investors. Just search around FB and you should be able to find at least a few. 

The real estate community in OKC is fantastic, so feel free to reach out to the community if you need help. I've found that everyone is generally really nice and helpful. 

I don't usually ask for tax returns, but I do ask for pay stubs. For the co-signer, I would do background/credit checks and ask for verification of pay (pay stubs and/or bank statements) and employment verification. I know of other landlords that request bank statements as well so they can verify that they could manage to pay the rent obligation should it come to that. 

How is the couple planning to pay rent if neither of them is currently employed? I personally don't think I would accept applicants that do not have current income since we don't know how long this mess is going to last. I think double deposit plus first month's rent is probably a safe bet. 

I use Buildium for payments, but I've played around with Cozy as well.
I want to say they both have options where you can select whether to allow partial payments.  I would look into Cozy. It's pretty user friendly and it's free as long as you stick with the basic features. 

I would send both tenants links for your local resources like unemployment and any local grants they could apply for. I would let the other tenant know that paying nothing is not an option. Have a conversation with her and try to come up with some sort of payment plan and get it in writing.
I've seen other landlords say that as long as their tenants are making an effort to pay something and are cooperating they'll work with them. If they refuse to cooperate, they issue their appropriate notices so that they can be the first in line when eviction courts open back up. That may be what you need to look into. 

It's going to depend on your financing options. Most conventional lenders will require a seasoning period before they will refi a property for anything other than your original purchase price. This can be anywhere from 6 months to a year after purchasing. 

I would get a loan for the amount you need right now, hold tight and then after everything stabilizes a bit you can look into getting a HELOC if you need to pull money out.