All Forum Posts by: Dave Poeppelmeier

I own rentals around the University of Toledo. Our local news media reported that UT plans on opening campus for the fall, which is great news. I found that this spring, only 2 out of the 17 students moved back home despite classes going completely online for the rest of the semester. The sentiment I found was that they like staying with their friends and still living in the college atmosphere instead of going back home with Mom and Dad. If worst case scenario, they do online classes again I feel my students will move in. Otherwise, if they don't, I'll have to eat a month or 2 of rent, but there is still a high non-student interest in houses around UT, and I'll just rent to non-students for a year or two, then get back on the school cycle again. 

Once, I had someone looking to scam post duplicate listings for the houses I had for rent taking my pictures and everything. Zillow's customer service took them down quickly, but watch out for that too. Otherwise I have found that most of my residents found my houses on Zillow/HotPads/Trulia than anything else right now, and it's still free in my market. Otherwise I have tried Facebook before, but nothing good ever came from those leads, so I'm sticking with Zillow. 

Awesome! You can read all the books you want but until you actually buy your first one you won't see how it all works. Congrats!!!

Hi Laura, glad you found this thread! What part (s) of Toledo do you invest in?

@Jeffrey Andrews The biggest thing I would look at is your cash flow and potential appreciation worth the increased price tag? Columbus is obviously the biggest growth area of Ohio so the appreciation will be there and good schools will always draw families that for one reason or another can't buy. I would rather buy 3 houses that add up to better cash flow in those areas like Toledo and Dayton with easier market entry than starting to play with the big boys with lots of money in Columbus, but that's just me.

I am getting new tenants for all of my rentals a lot easier than I though I would right now. The houses that were still up for rent for the next School Year (Student Rentals), I took a smartphone Virtual Tour, posted them on YouTube with a link in our website, and they have all rented, some without even doing a physical tour. I've also had non-students requesting information about houses and have had 1 group of non-students rent my last available house. People still need a place to live, and this is making me feel better about the state of our rental industry in general. 

I don't feel that taking some kind of deferment or forbearance is a bad thing in this current market and situation. For a beginning investor, if that's the way they get through this because a tenant stopped paying rent for one reason or another, then it's what they have to do. I don't feel that it's not "having a little dignity" when I was able to get a deferment on 2 of my loans that will allow me to have non-paying tenants move out, get them renovated, and get new tenants in there over the course of 3 months and not have to pay the mortgage payment and lose even more liquid capital. It will be interesting to see if future lenders hold this against me in Commercial Lending given everything going on with Covid-19, but if that's the case then I probably would not want to be in business with them anyway. 

I'm an investor in Toledo, OH, and the great thing about this market is that you can Cash Flow all day and it is an easy market to enter. You don't invest for appreciation here, so it really is a nuts-and-bolts property management game that a beginning investor can attempt by putting $15k down on a $60k house and not risk their life savings like they would in a high value coastal area. Over 50% of Toledo's housing stock is Rentals, but like any city if you go out into certain suburbs you are now in a high growth area (Monclova, Perrysburg and Sylvania here) where you can still get some cash flow but you can also get appreciation. I used to live in Seattle, and although I loved that area there is no way I could have started to invest there without driving 2 hours away or across the Cascades to get into an affordable price range. 

We add Central Air to houses when we buy them. The only one we haven't is one we have had the original tenants in since we bought the house over 2 years ago because they haven't complained or asked for it. AC really depends on who you're marketing to. If you're in a rural area outside of Toledo that not every house is used to having AC, then you might be able to get away without. But if you're in the suburbs or higher value areas of Toledo, you really should have AC since that is what people are accustomed to. Hope that helps!

Yup, just open a Savings Account at your local Bank (or even online banks work fine too) and leave it there. You just need to be able to say "yes, your deposit is at ABC bank", I have that on my lease as well. DO NOT put it in any personal account, that's a big no-no. Hope this helps!