All Forum Posts by: Christina Linn

My experience is that houses generally keep tenants longer, but I have several tenants in apartments that are on or getting ready to start their 4th lease - I require a renewal and do not ever go month-to-month.  Multi-family cash flow more in my experience - as long as you have mostly good tenants.  Repairs are property dependent.  Tax breaks?  Write-offs vary based on expenses.  In my area multi-family are harder to sell and can sit for years if they are bigger than a 4-plex; however, that very situation allowed me a great deal on my 8-plex that cash flows exceptionally well.

I would research laws in your location, as they vary greatly.  I base these situations off tenant history and whether or not I actually even want to keep the tenant.  My state is very landlord friendly, but that's not always the case.

@Keith Eledui I've found that financing is easiest with small banks. We financed our 8-Plex with 20% down on 5/1 ARM with 25 year amortization. I don't think most big banks would have done that based on my research.

No, you don't need to worry about being offensive.  I bought a house 2 years ago that was listed for 160k and sat for several months.  The sellers dropped the price to $130k and we offered $90k the next day.  They accepted!

Also, you don't need an amazing deal to get started!  As long as you are making a good investment that you can sell if needed and cash flowing what you need to then you're doing well.  I would suggest getting another real estate agent, because you need someone on your side in my opinion.

I strongly suggest checking out GovernRent.  It's a way to keep track of rental expenses, income, model and serial numbers of appliances/tools, notes from inspections, vehicle mileage and fuel costs and lots more.  You can even group receipts together for expense and write-off purposes.

Oh, cool!  There are two of those I believe.  We almost bought one about a year ago, but decided against it because of the shared utilities.  We looked at the other one a few months ago and the layout was so weird that I just couldn't stomach it.  I have never used owner financing or investors - only banks, but I really need to learn!!  Any advice?!

I don't think anything unethical happened here.  A 6% fee is not unreasonable.  You could have gone directly to the owner and avoided a fee, but you chose to contact a realtor.  What part do you think is unethical exactly?

 The first one is so hard; I wouldn't have even done it if I didn't already own the property.  We just bought #19 and let me tell you that if you are in it - really in it - the payout and reward in knowledge is definitely worth it.  You should definitely be calculated in your decisions though, because mistakes cost a lot early in the game.  Once you've made money it's easier to make money, so mistakes and tenant issues (for buy and hold) aren't as big of a deal.

 That's an awesome story!  It does take a lot of work and knowledge; you will only gain more if you continue.  I do all our renovations with my toddler in tow, which is much more stressful than 3 years ago.  It is definitely worth it to me to have done all that work, but we are fixing up a recent purchase right now and I am sitting on a bed in another rental typing this text while my contractor is finishing up at the other house!  It's taken a lot of time and patience - a lot of learning - to get to this point, but I can honestly say that it's more than worth it to be paying a few grand for this guy to lay this tile and build these walls!  My son and I took a trip for the first couple days of construction.  I will still paint, because I feel like painters cost WAY too much, but if you continue down this path it's likely that at some point it will be more worth your time to find deals and spend time with your family than get dirty and sweat.