All Forum Posts by: Greg Weik

@Anthony Parr, tell your wife some people on the internet told her she's wrong.  You're welcome to borrow my couch.  :) 

Obviously, I'm very biased, because I own rentals and a property management company, much like @Nathan Gesner  But as Nathan said, the numbers simply don't lie.  Net worth in the millions from owning just a few rentals over a few years is not at all uncommon.  Leveraging that equity to buy more rentals just spreads out the money and builds the wealth even more, as you obtain more high-dollar assets to appreciate.  Rinse and repeat. 

People can be very successful in either world though, I'm sure of it.  I personally prefer steady and predictable growth, and predictable demands on my time,  so I've never really considered flipping. 

@Account Closed right now, home prices are dropping. A lot.  They're dropping fast in a lot of areas.  Rental rates are pretty stable.  So... If you continue to wait to try to find a "bottom", my best guess is January/February 2023.  The people that have to sell (or think they have to sell) will have their homes listed far below what the market price was even 6-10 months ago.  There will be deals on the home prices, but you will get hit on the back end with higher interest.  It seems like a wash, but I don't think it is, over the long term.  Interest rates will eventually go back down. 

So if you wait for a few months to pull the trigger, acquisition costs will be attractive.  This should be a feeding frenzy for cash buyers.  Assuming you're not a cash buyer, and with interest rates climbing, the numbers still are not likely to be great - in the short term.  Remember, rents are pretty stable around Denver.  This is unlikely to change.  This means if you can weather the interest rate storm, you can refi in a couple of years and your numbers should be solid. 

@David Lemont underwriting is a challenge when it comes to acquiring additional properties.  The two-year rule is very common and from my experience, not something very easy to get around. 

It might sound counter-intuitive, but have you considered renting something to fully set the clock on your 2 (soon to be 3) rental properties?  This is a tough time to buy, with interest rates what they are, but if you can position yourself to be ready to pull the trigger on another house in two years, my crystal ball tells me interest rates will cool down and house prices will have leveled or even dropped in some areas by then.   

Whatever you do, don't try to sell your current primary home.  This is the worst time to sell I've seen since 2008 and it's not getting better anytime soon. 

Hi @Stuart Crowell, I would be wary of any single company that claims competency in all those areas (short-term/executive, long-term, and commercial), but for long term single family or small residential property management needs, this is where we (Real Estate Solutions) have focused our energy for the past 15 years. 

Looking forward to connecting! 

Hi @Breonna Mahana, I want to add an endorsement for working with Craig Curelop The FI Team.  We've been working with Craig directly for years now, helping him with his personal properties as well as clients he has referred to us.  Craig is professional, knowledgeable, responsive, and really great to work with.  You can't go wrong. 

Hi John, have you spoken to a property manager regarding the likely rental rate?  It may be more than you expect, and a consideration for you is that even if you end up subsidizing your mortgage by a little bit each month, this is far better than giving away the home.  If you can even rent it out for a year or two (hopefully mortgage interest rates will settle and the market will bounce back), you would pay down some of your mortgage and hopefully eek out some appreciation.  

A good PM company with high standards will put solid tenants in your home who are extremely unlikely to cause damage.  The risks of damage or default are always there, but they are reasonably small risks. 

I find very often that people who can't cashflow on a property think it's a bad investment, out of hand.  I would take a more nuanced approach and consider the return on investment differently: If you have to subsidize your rental $100 every month, but at the end of the year it's worth $5,000 more, you still come out ahead, right?   Losing $10k out of hand on a short sale does not seem like the smart play, IMO. 

@Oren H. even in the Denver market I would not be able to answer this question for a client, and we manage over 600 doors.  What the market is doing, as @Drew Sygit said, is incredibly local and specific to a given property.  We are seeing some houses in the Denver area still rent very quickly, but other houses in other markets (such as certain Denver suburbs, Colorado Springs, or northern Colorado), or other types of properties have been sitting longer than I've seen in some time. 

I suspect Boise is actually fairly similar to Denver in terms of the rental market.  The past couple of years have been very good for rental rates, appreciation, and properties have been renting quickly.  All of a sudden, the brakes have been pumped.  Some of my clients, I know, are very hesitant to respond to the market (even with our guidance) with price drops and condition improvements because they are still mentally in a March/April 2022 frame of mind.  A lot has changed since then and it's important to live in the now. 

I think a better way to get the answers you seek from your PM (and you can probably find out these answers without asking them) would be to determine the following: -How does the marketing look?  Do they have good photos and/or a video tour?  -Where is your property listed?  -How responsive is your PMC to showing requests?  Do they make it easy or difficult to see your property?  Are they super-responsive, or slow to react? I would suggest either posing as a prospective tenant or having someone you know pose as a prospective tenant to see how the PM handles incoming inquiries.  I know that at my company we assume every inquiry we ever see is what we call "a mole" and it helps to keep my team on their toes.

If your PMC is handling the above well, then all you can do is lower the price and/or improve the condition of the home. Hopefully, your PMC can give you some better insight on what it will take to get your property rented, other than just blaming "the market". 

 Hey @Corey Bogaski thanks for your service! I have used my VA loan a few times to buy properties and it's a great way to go.

My advice to you is to focus first on the logistics of renting out rooms.  Make sure you have a clear process in terms of application criteria, and a solid house-hack lease with house rules.  I would strongly urge you to only allow month-to-month leases.  The m2m lease will help you hedge against anyone that made it through your screening but who is trouble and who you would like out of your house asap.  Terminating a m2m lease is far easier than trying to evict, especially on a room-for-rent situation.  If you already knew all this, you're off to a good start!

As for improvements to the home - I agree with what @William Sing said about lighting and kitchen cabinet hardware. Lighting in particular is often overlooked and it goes a long way in terms of attracting tenants or eventually selling. Other renovations will be neighborhood-specific, to a degree. It's ok to have the nicest house in the neighborhood, but at a certain level of improvements, you may not see an ROI when the time come to sell. Since you're just starting off, I think you should focus on what you suggested - paint, carpet and overall rent-ready. These things matter the most and it's important to keep up with them over time.

Facebook groups can also be a good place to find tenants.  Good luck! 

 How many landlords do you know?

 @Bruce Woodruff The answers on here are good, but society views lawyers similar to how they see landlords.  Much of society has a general sense of disdain towards both, because they see them as taking advantage of people who don't have the tools or resources to fight against them.  If we're being honest, this perception is often accurate. Most of the negativity towards landlords is based on a sense of inequity.  

I've owned a property management company for 15 years. In that time, we've had many landlords show up as clients who were the very definition of slumlords.  They hired us (or in some cases, we didn't let them hire us) thinking we would continue their abysmal operation in the same manner.  We've had clients or would-be clients bring us run-down properties inside and out.  These landlords do the bare legal minimum with their rentals just to avoid getting sued.  This type of landlord has no interest in paying a professional to fix an issue that requires a professional (such as serious electrical issues.) They're the type of landlord that "finds a guy" or "knows a guy."  

Some of those landlords have been shown the light by RES, and some have been shown the door.  The smarter landlords have seen that spending money to make money is indeed a great strategy when executed well.  We've convinced many of these types of landlords that by investing in their property, we make them a lot more money over the long term.  Better tenants, less turnover, higher rents, better move-outs, etc.  Many of those landlords, however, didn't cut it in the RES system, and they're out there in the world now, being the slumlords they always wanted to be. 

But... just like lawyers, it's not right to paint an entire industry with a broad brush.  There are always good ones, not-so-good ones, and objectively bad ones.  The overall negativity towards landlords is unfortunate, but it's not likely to change.  The best we can do in our little slice of the world is to try to move the needle in a positive direction by being ethical, and professional, and by keeping our properties in better condition than is required.