All Forum Posts by: Clayton Sneider

I have about $750K debt on 1.1M equity in three houses, including my personal one. My two rentals cash flow and I am not very concerned about not being able to make mortgage payments. In order to really get in trouble I think the economy would have to tank worse than last time, and I would have to loose my job and not be able to find ANY work for an extended period of time. And if that happens, I would be screwed even if I didn't own rentals. Overall, having the debt, plus the cash flowing rentals makes me more secure not less I think.

Erica: I plan to self manage. I want to buy a place that is within walking distance of my house.

Rick: I have not looked at VRBO or HomeAway, I will take a look now. I purchased a report from airDNA. It was somewhat helpful, although I think looking at adds for similar properties on AirBnB is the most helpful.

Do any of you have experience self managing an AirBnB property? Any idea how many hours a month work this is? I know that's a hard question to answer as it depends on the property.

I think as a first step, I am going to rent out my basement unit on AirBnB to get a taste for it, before I commit ~$60K for a down payment.

Mindy, I was thinking SW Longmont near Nelson and Airport because that's close to where I live. I can see why Old Town would be good though. I am pretty close to the fairgrounds. I am wondering what kind of occupancy rates I could expect.

Nikki, Thanks! I am taking a look at airdna right now. Wow, 3-4X times typical rent, that's crazy. I probably can't do that good in Longmont I assume.

I am thinking of purchasing a 2/2 condo in Longmont CO to use as an AirBnB rental. Does anybody here have experience with AirBnB in this specific area? I appreciate any advice that people have, although I am mostly interested to hear from people in the Boulder County area or Longmont in particular. I am thinking of purchasing an upscale unit in SW Longmont. My major questions at this point are: How much demand will there be? How many nights per year can I expect to rent it? If I were to hire somebody to do all the cleaning, how much would that cost? Thanks.

Larry Tanner: Some states require a landlord to give the tenant a grace period before a late fee is charged. In my state I believe you have to give a three day grace period. So, while the lease states that rent is due on the 1st, a late fee is not charged until the third.

I agree with Greg S., I charge extra pet rent, plus take a few hundred in extra deposit. I make more money on tenants with pets. It is an additional income stream, even if it is small. Sure, occasionally there will be damage, but overall I will come out ahead. Every extra percentage in rent that I can get increases my cashflow percentage by probably 4X that amount. I don't understand the people who simply won't accept pets. Isn't there some dollar amount of extra rent that would make it worth it?

I will deduct from the deposit any rent lost due to vacancy until I can get new tenants in, that is a given.

So is the general consensus here that I should not try to get an early termination fee from him?

Thanks.

Hey,

I have a tenant in my first rental property that wants to break the lease early. There is no early termination clause in my lease (I will add that in now, lesson learned). I would like to charge him ~1/2 month early termination fee, but he is fighting it.

Can I legally charge this early termination fee, even though it is not in my lease? It seems crazy to me that a tenant should be able to just terminate a lease at any time, with no penalty, whether it is in the lease or not.

Thanks.

How much money does your family really need to live on? From the amount you have in saving, I would bet that you have actually been living on significantly less than your income. Maybe you could work for another year or two and save 50% of your income. Then you would have north of a million in retirement. If you quit at that point and lived on your wife's salary your 1 million nest egg would keep growing in the stock market until your wife decided to retire a couple years later. A lot of people can live really comfortably on way less than they think, if they don't buy fancy cars etc...

Have you read about FIRE (Financial independence, early retirement)? There is a whole online community focused on it, and by many standards you could retire right now or soon if you keep your expenses low. Just an alternative to investing in real estate.