All Forum Posts by: Chris Bingham

If you feel like you dont want to upset the tenants, you may want to look at where they currently park. Develop a plan of where you'd like them to park and then implement it piecemeal as each tenant moves out...sorta playing tetris with the parking spots. 

If you are OK upsetting the tenants, develop a plan. Give them a 30 day notice that this is how it is going to be and implement it. Maybe add a fee if they are parking in someone else's spot. I have implemented an added fee for garage parking when there is limited garage parking spots. 

Every one of those options will help form a good foundation for real estate investing. You will likely get some real world experience with each of those options as you dive into real estate investing. I went for a Finance degree. It was wonderful and has proven very useful. However, a lot of my finance degree was geared toward stock and bond investors. Even the real estate courses I took as electives were geared toward corporate investors....not directly applicable to 95% of the real estate investors out there. However, it definitely taught me a lot about the guts of a company and those principles that can be applied to every company out there. 

I went back and got an accounting degree. This is useful if you are applying the principles every day. Knowing how you will deduct things on your taxes makes decision making a lot easier. However, the things you don't use will become forgotten. 

I continue to think that if I get another degree it will be in marketing. This is so useful and comes into play all the time. You market for tenants, you market for leads when you flip a place, you market to find money from other passive investors, you market when you build a website, you market when you stage a home, you market to other investors and realtors when you sell the flip. Marketing is a very useful aspect of every business. There is a lot of psychology involved with marketing. 

Take a look at your strengths. Do you want to build on those? Or do you want to strengthen an area of weakness? Do you have the potential to take a class from an instructor/professor who has invested in real estate themselves. If so, it may be useful to take that course; especially if it is an area of real estate investing you are interested in. Then see if you can work for/with them in some role...maybe as a research assistant, or if they are an adviser for a club on campus join that club and try to get into a leadership role within the club so you have a chance to rub shoulders with them outside of the classroom and maybe in a more relaxed setting than even the club duties. This is a great time to pick their brain. 

Beyond what any of your university courses may teach you, see if you can find a real estate investors group in your local community and go to it. You will have the chance to listen to people who have done it and will teach you the real world application of what you may find in your studies. Learning both and thinking about both views at the same time will be tremendously useful to you. Best wishes!

I've been testing out Cozy for a couple months now. I'd like to roll it out to my tenants. One big concern I have is knowing which tenant has paid. The transaction on my bank account only shows up as: 

ACH Dep: STRIPE INC CO: STRIPE INC 

Since I have several tenants paying the same amount for their unit, how can I verify which tenant has paid? I know that within Cozy it shows "Payment from John Doe tenant" once their payment has been submitted. However, what if they don't have sufficient funds when Cozy tries to pull the payment? Is there a notification of this? Or if they ACH payment is processed and then kicked back. I also work at a financial institution and I've seen ACH payments get reversed before. How would I know which payment was reversed?

I'm in my mid 30s and I'm house hacking my way through this. Because I'm single, I've been buying houses, moving into one of the bedrooms and renting out the other rooms. I have 2 applicants interested in renting out the master bedroom: 

Option A:

49 Yr old, taking a job transfer to Utah, Income is 15x rent. Owns his own house in the state he is moving from. Excellent Credit. No criminal history. Planning to live there for at least 3 months, probably going to move somewhere else after he's settled into the area a little bit. I haven't met him yet. He won't be here until he moves to Utah.

Option B:

27 Yr old, Self Employed, Income is 5X rent. Bad credit due to some medical bills (Willing to put down 2x the my standard deposit). Misdemeanor Attempted Aggravated Assault 2 years ago.  Looking to live here for quite a while. He seems like a nice guy when I met him.

If Option A were going to stay a long time I think it would be a no brainer, pick A. But if he moves out in just a few months vs a tenant who's ready to stay a while I'm tempted to go the Option B route. What do you think?

How do you structure a cosigner/guarantor for a tenant (recently graduated student) that has zero credit history, but who has excellent verifiable income.

Thank you! That is exactly what I was missing. It was right there the whole time.

I like the search function, maybe I'm missing something...is there a way to search within only 1 forum? So that I don't have to sift through the results coming from all the forums?

Hey Jacob, welcome to Bigger Pockets. This is a great resource. My biggest piece of advice is to be sure you are going to make money when you purchase the property. i.e. if you plan to rent it out, be positive that you will be making a profit at the end of the day. If you aren't, it won't make much sense. Don't listen to some guru that tells you it is OK to have a negative cash flow for the first few years. Its not OK. If you are going to do this, make sure you are going to be able to make money at it. When I bought my first rental property I looked at the potential rent and said, OK that looks good. But What If I Am Wrong? Or the market takes a dive right after I buy it. What kind of rent would I need to charge to be positive that I will fill up the vacancy in 1 weekend? When I can drop the rent that much and my numbers still come out with me not losing money on it, that is when I felt comfortable pulling the trigger to buy my first place.

With FHA loans, you can get in with 3.5% down. But beware, the mortgage insurance NEVER drops off on FHA loans. A few years ago it would drop off after you had a certain amount of equity in the property. Not anymore. The pesky mortgage insurance stays on for the life of the loan. So, make sure you plan for that if you go FHA.

Conventional will let you get in for 5% down on an owner occupied place. They have mortgage insurance as well, but it doesn't stick around for the life of the loan. Also, I have found it worthwhile to buy out the mortgage insurance upfront if I plan on keeping the place for several years. 

Another piece of advice. Just jump in and do it as soon as possible. If you hustle and especially if you are not afraid to fix things on your own, you can get through just about any hurdle!

OK, one more. If you live in the property for 2 of the last 5 years as your primary residence and sell it, you may not have to pay any federal taxes on the gain. This is a great way to build up some wealth without having uncle sam take a chunk along the way.

Good Luck!

What would you do if a potential tenant used one of your past problem tenants as one of their personal references on your rental application? would that prevent you from renting to them?

@Antonio Coleman You have some great suggestions! One thing you mentioned above is to get your epic content pieces ranked locally? How do you recommend getting your pieces ranked locally?