All Forum Posts by: Prashant P.

I kind of did this for a while. I bought a townhouse, lived in it for a few months then moved out and rented the property. My job moved me around so there was no reason to stay there. Finally when I moved back into town, I needed a place to stay for a while so I rented an apartment for a year. In the mean time, I bought 3 more rentals.

After a while I thought to myself, why am I paying some other guy $12,000 a year when I could be building equity myself.

If you are considering this, I would think about buying a personal residence first. You will most likey save some moeny over rent and building equity in your home.

Also, consider buying a duplex or multiunit place. That way you can accomplish both goals at the same time.

I think you are going to get various answers for your questions with differing opinions.

There are several questions to ask yourself when considering taking on more debt. Sure you will be generating income with a rental but you will also have additional risk if your property sits vacant or is damaged.

I would look at your total debt amount and see how long it will take for you to pay it off. If you pay extra on the loan how long will it take to pay off.

Will you have to take out any new loans in the future besides investments. For example a personal residence or car.

Personally, I started investing in real estate with student loans. However, mine were not to substaintial and I my a financial plan for myself to see if I was able to pay for another loan.

From what I gather, the bid period can be a week long or a day. So some bids may renew everyday while others will renew every week.

Your property may have had a bid period before, it expired and the new bid session was going to open tomorrow.

There is a whole section on the HUD Homestore website that explains the process.

http://www.hudhomestore.com/ListingSiteFAQ.htm#_Toc322423349

So if you are an investor you are basically going to have to wait for owner occupied, nonprofits and goverment agencies to bid on a property. This is the exclusive stage. Then depending on criteria it will be moved to the extended listing.

This is where an investor can bid on a property. However, in my understanding the owner occupied, nonprofit and goverment still rank higher than you. So if you submit a bid and so does one of the other three. They will get the house.

Hope the helps a little. Read the entire FAQ and you will get the picture.

If you purchase an investment you may lose any first time buyer mortgage programs that you may qualify for.

I would also suggest looking more for a residential rental than a college rental. In my opinion it is much easier for a first time landlord. You turnover is very high, maintenance is usually more, more legal issues with unrelated people living together.

A residential rental will allow to build your rental team and learn about landlording.

This is why I do two things to help in scenarios like this.

The first is that you put in a line in your lease that states that all complaints and maintenance requests be put in writing.

The second is document everything. I like to keep a log that states when a tenant calls, what they call for, the date the item was repaired, by whom, the cost and a copy of the reciepet. I document even the smallest detail like the tenant calls and says "thanks for fixing that". It just gives you something to present to the court in case you have to.

In your case, I would contact the extermination company and see if they can give you a copy of the report. I would then copy this report and send it to the tenant with a failure to pay rent notice stating all repairs have been made.

If they still refuse to pay, I would start with a notice to vacate the property notice. I thnk cash for keys is a last resort before eviction. You are already losing rent.

In my opinion, I think that alot of people who post about finding tenants or are having tenant problems are first time landlords.

When they bought their property they thought they could have gotten the maximum rent for the area or it was in a great area. After the property sits a while with few leads, they try to rationalize why the first person that comes through the door will be a great tenant.

I think this is all due to inexpierence rather than not treating the tenant like a customer.

Or you could sell or wholesale (but with steep price) the lot to the person that has the property under contract.

Even though a house looks good on the outside it can have hidden problems behind the walls. If you are not that expierenced at inpsecting houses it may be worth wild to spend $400 to get things check out.

There could be bad wiring, plumbing that is not vented correctly, mold, water damage, foundation issues or other things that you may have not noticed.

Thanks for the responses. I was thinking that $250 was more reasonable. I understand that there is time investment on the GCs part.

I want to bring a GC for two reasons, I need a written estimate for my HML and I have not done a rehab of this scale or in this area before.

I have a rough estimate of what I think the rehab would cost, about $65k.

IMO even though I am asking him to do work for me, he has the potential for a pretty big job. This should be some incentive, right.