All Forum Posts by: Corby Goade

My two cents...your level of experience is inconsequential. The PM should understand what level of service you need and meet you there. If your gut is telling you that they aren't the right fit, then they are definitely not the right fit. This is the biggest challenge in long distance investing- I'd recommend you start interviewing again, and in your agreement with a new PM, very specifically line out what your communication and service expectations are so that there is no misunderstanding from the get go.  There are plenty of PMs that will tell you that their rep agreement is standard and they don't modify them. I'd not work with a PM that won't be flexible, you can find one, but it might take some time. 

Best of luck!

Not a fun issue to deal with. A couple thoughts- maybe you call animal control yourself and just say that you are the property owner and are tired of the dog constantly barking. They aren't going to ask you if you actually live there, so you don't have to be dishonest to file a complaint. 

Maybe a bit outside of the box (and possibly a terrible idea), but if you net a healthy monthly profit, if the neighbors have at least been amicable, just not really responsive, maybe you could throw them $50 every month that you don't get a noise complaint? 

Good luck-

More than anything else, buy from someone you know and trust. Go out and interview property managers, real estate agents, attorneys, CPAs, etc. It's really easy for someone to take advantage of someone who they've never met, or at the very least, give them less than stellar service.

Come out to Idaho- the market here is great, I'll introduce you to everyone you need to know!

Best of luck-

Maybe drop it by a few dollars so it pops back on to people's MLS listings, but change the description to include that you are offering a credit for something at closing, pay part of the closing costs, paying for a home warranty, etc. See if you can find something that will serve as an incentive to people who might be in the market for a house in your area.

Best of luck!

@Alex Smith, I think you are on the right track. RE is not a get rich quick type of thing, it's a get rich slow and plan long term scheme. Sounds like are doing exactly that. For the record, I wasn't referring to you owning a PM business, but an investment business. We've got our own PM business, but it sort of came out of our having spent years managing our own properties and learning (the hard way) how to do it. It's not our primary source of income, but we've found that if you find great tenants, it really can be a fairly passive income stream.

In any occasion, if you can stay on track and retire at 34, you'd be living right. Good luck!

It really depends on the inspector and relationships you have with tradespeople. I've run in to this before and asked my electrician and plumber to take a look and pull a permit. They've done the work they needed to get it up to code and walked through with the inspector a had everything certified relatively inexpensively. Some tradespeople, understandably, don't want to pull a permit unless they do the work from start to finish. If you know someone who will work with you, it might not be that big of a deal.

As for the responsibility of the permitting- assuming everything was done to code and is safe, the challenge will be when you try to sell it, it's very likely that during inspection the lack of permits will show up and it could be a dealbreaker or possibly good leverage for your buyer.

Short answer, you need to ask an attorney in your area. In my state, regardless of what I have in writing, I am responsible for storage and maintenance of any personal property left behind for six months. If the tenant comes back to collect five months later and I do not have it, I am financially responsible.

I'd recommend that you complete your taxes just as you have been doing, but before submitting, pay a CPA who KNOWS real estate to review them with you. It's important that you understand how your expenses and taxes effect your bottom line, so keep on doing what you are doing, but have a CPA verify that you are on the right track. We do that exact same thing, and use TurboTax, too, I think it's a great product for rental properties and really simplifies things.

Some of your questions are state specific (taxes are charged and paid differently in every state, so I can't address that). That being said, anything you do to the house that has a useful life, ie; either adds value to the property or will be used for several years, is a capital expense. Your windows are a capital expense because they will be used for many years before they need to be replaced. If you simply replaced a broken pane, that might be more of a repair than capex.

Best of luck!

Obviously the market in SF is crazy, but if you are going to be an investor/landlord, I think it's vital to manage on your own when you get started. You learn so much that helps you as you grow. If you don't know how to fix things around the house or how much a repair should cost, or how to screen tenants or what a reasonable interaction with a tenant should be, how do you supervise or direct a PM to do so on your behalf? It's like any other job- a supervisor should understand how their reports jobs and duties work, so that they can effectively lead them and achieve their goals as a team. Investing is no different.

While it's possible to have success in turnkey, it's also possible to lose your shorts because you don't know enough to push your PM when you should.

I am a HELOC guy all the way. We use a HELOC to pay "cash" for properties and are able to refinance them fairly quickly and pay the HELOC off, start all over. It's a great, inexpensive tool. It's true, your interest rate might be a bit higher, but you won't be actually paying interest until you use the money. Just be sure to understand your cash out options once you acquire a property so that you can keep the train rolling!

Best of luck!