All Forum Posts by: Cassi Justiz

There are a few options with house hacking. Think of it more as a "roommate" situation. If you are renting out a room, they will have access to common areas including living room, kitchen, living room, yard, etc. Pick a roommate based on criteria that is important to you. You'll want to do the normal due diligence like make sure they have income, good references, can pass a background check, etc. Because you will be sharing a living space with them, you'll want to make sure their lifestyle is compatible with yours. (Do they have children that will also be moving in or spending time there, do they work weird hours or work from home where they need silence in the home during the day, etc). Also, think about pets, smoking, or other deal breakers that you can establish up front before you start interviewing potential tenants. 

Other options for house hacking single family units would be to furnish a room and do short or medium term rentals. You could rent to traveling nurses/contractors on a month to month basis or even just rent out the space on the weekends if you live in an area that makes sense to do so. 

I would definitely start with a repair person and figure out what is going on. A stove definitely shouldn't be going out after 6 months of use. It could be a breaker/electrical issue, it could be an issue with the actual stove, or even just the tenant not being used to an electric stove and the burners turning on and off during the cooking process. 

After you get the repair person out there, you can decide what steps to take next. 

I'd check with an attorney in your market to help make that decision. It would be different depending on whether you're wanting to transfer to an LLC for tax purposes, asset protection, etc. I have a mix of properties that are still held in my personal name vs properties that were bought and held through an LLC holdings. We got attorney advise for our specific situation and decided to just keep the properties in our personal names and set up a property management LLC that we run all of our rental income and expenses through. Also we have lots of insurance and umbrella insurance coverage.

Having a boots on the ground person is super helpful. I will have someone put a lockbox on the property so that way the approved tenant can access the property on move-in day. If you have a contractor, they can put a lockbox on the door when they change out the locks between tenants. I tell the tenants to keep the lockbox in the garage and when they move out, they can put the lockbox back on the door and put their keys back in there. 

Depending on how the furniture was situated during the inspection, I can see an inspector missing the window cracks and even soggy floor. (We had something similar happen on a purchase with a strategically placed couch that covered up a soggy wall and water damaged flooring). A ceiling sagging is something that definitely should have been caught by someone (inspector, PM, agent, etc). If it's a new issue, I would lean towards some sort of water intrusion over something like foundation. BUT there are a lot of possibilities. I would get a good general contractor out there ASAP and start there. 

Chat with your Realtor about why it isn't selling. In the major metro areas, a well priced house in most price points should sell in a matter of weeks. Rural Oklahoma is a whole different story, so you may be in a completely different market. If you don't feel like your Realtor is doing their part to sell the home, chat with their broker. The broker has the authority to release your listing or reassign it to another agent in their office. If your agent is the broker, then they can release the listing and most of the time they will if you request it. If they paid for marketing or staging, you may be obligated to pay them back for that. Read through your original listing agreement to see what your responsibilities are if you choose to end the listing agreement early. 

Hey @Jake Minyen,

Even on 30 year notes, it's still tough to cashflow. Looks like you got some clarification that these were commercial loans using your entity rather than personal loans. If you'd like some good resources for personal lenders that will finance an investment property, I'd be happy to connect you with a few. The rates are a little better and the longer loan term will help with cashflow, but unfortunately you won't be able to purchase using the LLC in this case.

Please feel free to reach out if you need any guidance locally. I'm always happy to help!

There's a pretty large variety of quality and types of properties in this zipcode. I would recommend checking out street view to get a good idea of the immediate area. If you have a property manager that you plan to work with, I'd ask for their thoughts on the area and the specific property. They can give you detailed info on the area and tenant profiles that they typically see in the area as what kind of rents they'd expect to collect. 

Welcome to BP! 

There are a lot of good meetup groups happening right now. The first of the month is a pretty popular time. You probably saw Coffee with Investors and Rhett mentioned MP Reia. Both of these are great for networking and will be on meetup.com. I would definitely try to hit both of those events this next week. You'll probably end up making plenty of connections there that can direct you to other networking events. 

There is a pretty regular BP meetup that happens at different breweries. If you are on FB look for real estate networking events. There is usually at least one investor happy hour a week. I can't keep up with all of the different dates/locations, but they're pretty easy to find on FB events. If you join some of the  OKC based FB groups for real estate investors and you'll start seeing the events! 

My section 8 experience took almost 3 months to get the payments transferred over from a previous owner on an inherited tenant. Some units it will make sense to utilize Section 8, but if the unit can get close to market rents without the bureaucracy I won't mess with it again.