All Forum Posts by: CJ Ashton

A non-communicative tenant scares me.  Do you know anybody close that could do a drive-by on the property just to make sure it wasn't falling down?  How about hiring a handyman to go do a "inspection" on a water heater or something and have them report back to you?

With only $25K equity, I would keep it as a rental.  It seems like you would have a solid cash flow - and once you've built up a little cushion for bigger maintenance items, you can use that cash flow to pay down your student loans.

Of course, lots of other factors to consider... Would you be managing it by yourself?  If so, is it geographically close to your new home?  If not, would the management fee kill your cash flow?  You didn't say how long you've been in your current home, but however long it has been, you are that much closer to having it paid off and then having a cash flow machine on your hands.  Also, assuming you have a fixed rate mortgage, your cash flow is likely to increase as rents go up.

I think renting out your current home is one of the safest ways to begin investing.  If you decide you hate being a landlord, there's nothing to stop you from selling the place 1 or 2 years down the road.

Are you at the lowest possible interest rate for the home you are leaving?  If not, refinancing and bumping the loan payoff out to 30 years again may drop your mortgage a bit and help with the cash flow problem.

I'm willing to rehab properties.  Despite sitting in front of a computer for my day job, I can do some basic stuff myself to save a couple of dollars.  I have found that sometimes hiring out saves a lot of time without costing that much more money.

Any idea on where to pick these homes up?  I haven't seen any come up on zillow at any significant discount at all.

I own one and manage 3 others.  While I understand the thinking, I don't think I would ever charge this kind of service call fee to my tenants.  I know it would tick me off if I were the tenant.

One time we had one of our places rented out to some early-to-mid twenty-something girls.  Is it still politically correct to say "airheads"?  Nice kids.  Always paid rent on time.  But man, a couple of times they called us out for what I considered really simple stuff.

"The hot water doesn't work in the hall bath."  That seemed really odd.  Unfortunately, I was really busy with my full-time job and couldn't make it out there so I called my handyman.  Ummm, they were turning the shower handle the wrong way.  SMH, as the kids say.  We laughed about it and chalked it up to experience.  Sweet girls.  I hope they married well.

I had one tenant that took care of the place so well and decorated so nicely that I asked if I could have pictures professionally taken before she moved out so I could use them to market the property, showing the "staged" photos online.

I own one rental and manage 3 others.  I can't speak to the legality - and I would guess that differs by jurisdiction - but I don't think there's any moral problem with this at all.  In fact, I think it's brilliant and may try it.

If you've had 100 inquiries in 24 hours, you've very likely set the rent way too low.  The above option gives you the chance to get yourself up closer to market rent.  One thing you'll want to watch out for, however, is folks stretching beyond their income to pay that higher rent.  Nothing is more stressful than a tenant that is always late and/or an eviction because they can't come up with the funds.

Just out of curiosity, how did you come up with a number?  I keep an eye on the neighborhood through zillow and craigslist a few months before I come up renewal so I have a pretty good idea where to set the initial price.  I usually try to price a bit high and if I'm not getting enough interest in the first 24-48 hours, I'll sometimes drop it a bit.

I'm interested in hearing what more experienced investors/landlords have to say on this.

Rick, I just posted my intro as well (Gilbert).  
Welcome.

I'm Colby Ashton.

I'm an "investor"/landlord by necessity... When we moved a few years back, it didn't make sense to sell our home at the bottom of the market so we decided to keep it as a rental.

In the subsequent years, I have found that I don't mind landlording that much and the extra couple of dollars of cash flow is nice.  So, I've decided to hunt around for more homes.  I'm particularly interested SFHs for a buy/hold/rent.  I'd like to keep everything within a really tight radius in and around Gilbert as I plan on managing the properties myself and don't want travel long distances to flip a circuit breaker.

My challenge right now is that homes in my area are selling for top dollar on the retail side and I can't get my spreadsheet to cashflow.  I've even looked at the auction results from the last few months and those homes aren't selling for much of a discount at all.

I'm in the Phoenix area.  Assuming you are still feeling "charitable" down the road, let me know when you want to sell that property.  ;-)