All Forum Posts by: Kevin Nalley

Justin gave some solid advice and he's familiar with the area. A 60's built property will have less problems than one built in 1900.... so definitely stick with 20% on maintenance.

A typical two bedroom apartment in my area rents for approximately $450 (they pay their own gas and electric, I pay water). A tool I use when determining rent in an area I'm unfamiliar with is rentometer.com. I believe they use craigslist data and put it in a nice little visual map for you. If you're providing gas, your rent can be more than others that don't.

Something else I want to mention that is common sense. Try to avoid turnover so be careful about raising rents... when you do, do it in small increments yearly instead of waiting 3 or more years then raising it a large amount. Almost every time there's turn-over you'll have to go in and fix something (paint, clean, etc).

Tenants in lower income areas tend to be much harder on your property than tenants in a trendy area might be. In my area, almost every tenant smokes which really makes a place nasty, they try to move people in that aren't on the lease (extra wear and tear), etc... keep in mind, people that dont' have jobs (SSI, etc) are at your property all day long just thinking of reasons to call you to fix something.... LOL. The tenants in a low income area is what makes landlording challenging, it's not so much the building.

I'm with Aaron, I have passed on properties that require me to pay anything but water, and I don't even like paying that. Even with water, I've seen some wild fluctuations in bi-monthly bills.

Considering you're from Iowa and there are 3 units in this building, $175 for gas seems very low, especially in winter.

I have 22 doors right now (two duplexes, two 4-plexes, one tri-plex, and the rest are houses) and all of them are built in the late 1800's and early 1900's. 10% for maintenance is not enough, I would factor in a minimum of 20%, it seems like there's always something to fix with these old buildings and nothing in them is square or standard. With a mere 22 doors, I have a full time maintenance guy that stays very busy.

The biggest problem with slightly above Ghetto properties is tenant screening... I can't stress enough to learn everything you can about screening and do it thoroughly.

The simple answer is, ask your landlord and contact section 8. I have three section 8 tenants and I don't recall there being any restrictions as long as you can show you have the rights to rent the property, but it could be different in your state.

I have a 2006 National Construction Estimator book that says the contractors cost would be $105 per square for what they call a class A shingle. Adjust for 5 years and add in some profit and $180 per square doesn't sound too bad to me (16 x $75 profit = $1200). Caveat! I'm not a roofing contractor so I have no experience on this matter and only repeating what's in the book ;)