All Forum Posts by: Curtis Denlinger

I have a new property in a maybe at best C class neighborhood. I’m having trouble qualifying tenants. I have a lot who work jobs as servers or bartenders and make cash tips. Or I just had someone tell me today their main job is under the table.  So almost everyone I talk to makes more money and pays for things in cash, but then I can’t verify their funds. 

When dealing with C or D class neighborhoods, do you get creative with how you screen and qualify tenants?  Maybe do you have to do more digging and reach out to their employers?  If they keep money in cash so you can’t verify with bank statements, what do you do?  OR do you screen the same and just have higher vacancy in these types of neighborhoods since barely anyone can verify their funds the normal way?

Say more about if you go the cash out route?  I recently did a cash out. The mortgage payment for that property did go up about $400. I used the cash out money to buy another bigger newer property. I moved out an underperforming tenant, did a bunch of work to get that unit nice again and rented at market, and the other unit I just renewed their lease at market.  The new property now cash flows over $1,000/month. 

So if you’re saying that cash flow will decrease for the property you are cashing out, that’s correct most likely. If you use that cashflow correctly, overall your cashflow should increase. 

Congrats on deciding that real estate investing is what you would like to pursue!  Here’s what I’ll start with. One thing you will hear a lot is that you should just get started. Comparing to baseball is used a lot. Some properties you buy will turn out to be a base hit, some will be a homerun. That’s not always the case. You need to know enough though so that you don’t strike out or get hit with a fastball and end up injured on the bench. 

Start doing your research and learning about this game we play. Read real estate books. Bigger Pockets has lots of them. Sign up for their free seminars. Subscribe to the BP podcast, and commit to listening to every episode as they come out. Look back and listen to some that have been published in the past months. And as you are doing, be active in the forums. Find topics that interest you and ones that don’t and look at the responses. You will learn a lot. 

One other big thing to do is just start looking at deals. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t going to buy anything quite yet. Learn your market. In order to find a good deal when you seriously start looking, you need to know what it looks like AND what a bad deal looks like. Once you start running numbers on potential deals, you’ll find that properties that at first glance look like great deals, might not be. ALSO be careful of the marketing. There are realtors that are investor friendly and knowledgeable, and there are a lot who aren’t or who are misleading. 

Just earlier today I was looking at some deals and one was listed as a great investment opportunity.  Surprisingly it actually had all the rents listed for its units. The description claimed that there was immediate cashflow. I ran very quick numbers on it and as it sat with current rents and if you put down a 20% down payment, rental income was $400+ less than what I estimated the mortgage payment to be. Even if all the units were brought up to the rent amount of the most expensive unit, you might see $100 cashflow a month, and it was a 4 unit building. $25/door. After reading through I found that one of the utilities was the landlords responsibilities so there goes your cashflow. 

All that to say, definitely do a lot of research. Learn from others mistakes, learn from other peoples’ wins. Learn the market you are going to buy in. And then when you have learn what most peoples big mistakes are, buy your first deal and learn from your own hopefully small mistakes. Just know that if you buy right, long term, it is very hard to lose with real estate. And if you do your research and stay committed to continually learning, it will be impossible to lose. 

They should have their copy. But when the lease was signed it was a binding agreement between you (or whoever you bought the property from so now you since it transferred) and the tenant. Anything in the lease needs to be honored. In my experience, it seems like a tie or even anything that is even close to a tie goes in favor of the tenant. It’s our responsibility as the owner, the landlord to cross our Ts and dot our Is. I would guess if you didn’t share and the issue resulted in a lawsuit, not providing the lease would be an automatic strike against you and the judge would lean in favor of the tenant. 

They shouldn’t be anything shady in your lease so there should be no reason or hesitation to share it in my opinion. 

Out of curiosity, why are you hesitant to share the lease?  Had the lease been amended or have you drawn up a new lease in the years after the first year?  If after the first year you signed a new lease, that new lease would now be the controlling lease. If you only amended or added an addendum, then besides those sections that were amended, the original lease still applies.  End of the day, you signed, they signed, all was agreed upon, I would provide a copy of the lease. 

This really depends on your feel for the market, also maybe your realtors feel for the market, and what your plans are for it. 

If the area is going to remain a popular tourist area and desirable to the people who live there, the price will probably go up and you can refinance and take some money out to get another property. So if that’s the case, who cares if over a couples years you paid $1,000 more in interest because of the higher rate if you’ll own this property and be able to cash out refinance and pull tens of thousands out of the property?

Also, assuming you are going to rent it out, maybe cashflow will be tight in the first year, but the cashflow will grow as you increase your rent. 

I had breakfast with a couple gentlemen the other month and they said they could remember when their interest was in the teens. So interest in the 6 range isn’t that bad. Like they always say, it’s time in the market, not timing the market that counts. 

I also plan to working on speeding up our growth plan. I don’t have decades of experience and 100+ deals under my belt so raising money to go find a deal to give investors equity in isn’t my first option currently. I do have two duplexes that I have stabilized and are now cash flowing very nicely. I also still have my traditional job that provides some nice income.

So with those three sources of income I plan to raise some money and go the debt route. I’ll pay back my investors their interest over X amount of years which will be paid for by my existing two properties. And then at the end of X years I’ll pay back the principal. 

My ability to find deals and make them happen, that skill hasn’t become something I can do in my sleep yet. So taking investor money and giving them equity in a deal I don’t have yet doesn’t seem like the best course for me. Going the debt with interest route which can be paid back using the stabilized properties I already have and then backed up with my W-2 income seems like a better choice and one that investors could get behind easier. 

I would be working on getting pre approved so I knew what I could afford. Also I would be learning my market to see what’s out there and what different price points and house configurations would require. 

You said you want to hold and maybe do light fixer/upper so it sounds like fix and flip and fully reno projects are not what you are looking for. Learning the market and getting pre approved can help you form your criteria for what you are ideally searching for. Maybe you decide that you want a bigger property but don’t want to go commercial so a four plex is what you start looking for. After looking you find that pretty much turn key four places are out of your preapproval range. So now you know duplexes or triplexes are your target.

Or it might work the other way. Maybe you have some sort of limiting mindset and are just looking at duplexes but through the preapproval process and searching the market you find that a 3 unit property would easily be doable for you in your market. 

Those would be my steps. Identify the pieces that help you clarify your criteria for what your purchase will be. 

With the amount you still have to pay I don’t think cashing out is an option yet. I don’t know your address so research rent, so I just clicked a random address on Google maps to find a zip code for Roanoke. Looks like a 3/2 in the 24017 area could rent for $1,100. Low confidence on that estimate though. You said your monthly is $985 I think. I’m not sure what that is including. Is that mortgage, taxes, insurance, vacancy, maintenance etc?  Depending on what is and isn’t in that number, you could make $100+ a month if you rent it or you could be losing a few hundred a month. Not to mention you will be renting it to someone so that means you will have to go somewhere else and pay rent too. 

I think the better option might be to sell and then put the profits into a multi-family that you could house hack. So then instead of maybe losing a few hundred a month and paying someone else $1,000+- in rent, now you live in the property you own and someone else is paying most or all your mortgage AND you don’t have to pay someone else rent!  

I think that’s definitely what I would do.