All Forum Posts by: Christian Malesic

Ditto!

This was certainly one of the lessons we learned through the school of hard knocks. We did have enough $ to set in an account for 'emergencies'. One of those came by way of city government writing-up some repairs they wanted done. Often it was non-rent increasing things, such as outdoor pealing paint, downspouts, screens on windows, storm windows, or sidewalk repair.

Since we had calcualted INSIDE repair costs to be able to rent out a nice place, we had not thought of some of these other 'outdoor' expenses that the government made us fix.

It piled up quickly and all at once. We got through the storm with some credit card assistance and smartened up our buying approach to include outdoor items as well.

We 'wanted' a buiding for our other business (electrical contracting). So our RE company bought the building and rented it out to the electrical company.

There are pro and cons of doing it this way.

Pros:
Dependable tenant (us)
Long term lease
Good pay
Constant maintenance walkthrus

Cons:
We overpaid since we wanted a place in a certain geographical area
We 'fell in love' with the property, which is always a no-no in RE

Have all utilities put in tenant's name unless a default payment can result in a lien on your property - an example of this is most areas is water.

This is a very interesting thread. Thanks to all for providing thoughts.

We have considered sending Christmas Cards for the last few years, but have not yet done so (and do not have it in the budget for this year).

We are up to 30 units now, so even a $20 gift card plus travel and time OR shipping is $650 plus.

Cards alone with stamps is not anywhere near as expensive, maybe $50 - but the time investment should be considered.

We have been pondering the benefits of such actions, other than making us feel good.

In line with the thinking of some others who have already posted - we spent almost $100k this year in upgrades to our properties: roofs, steps, porches, total rehabs, outside painting, new entry doors, new heating systems (9 units), new trash cans. Now, granted, some of these things were to make our managment easier, but in every case the tenants benefited in some way.

B G,

It seems as though you figured it out. Any problems?

We will save you a little trouble:

See these threads:

Realtor License?

and here

Don't Rely on Agents - Become One

The other thing that is highlighted in this thread is the importance of being able to do rehab work yourself - or at least to manage it.

This means, you need to know your way around construction. What needs done and what doesn't? What is a good price for construction projects? What can you do vs. contract out? Which project is the chicken and which is the egg (order of rehab tasks)? At what point can you show a unit even though you are not quite done?

These all areas in which you need to be an expert in the REI biz.

We, too, 'skipped' the wholesale step according to your question and went directly to the buy & hold strategy.

There is the issue of initial cash to get started. We saved up. Put some money back every week. $1 here, $50 there and it will build. We did our first deal for $25k, cash. Sure, it takes time to get that kind of money together. But, if you do not start, you will never have any money waiting in the wings for that perfect deal. Our first deal turned out to be our best to date. Some of it was luck, but some of it was studying hard and looking for the ‘perfect deal’ during the saving up stage. When one is hungry and has a lot to lose, one tends to put more into any action.

We did not have the benefit of finding BiggerPockets and learning the 'easy way' through others. We used the library and the book store. We also had a few ‘mentors’ of sorts. Not true mentors by any stretch of the imagination, but folks who were willing to spend a lunch conversation with us. We went through the school of hard knocks and have made plenty of 'mistakes'. All in all, though, I probably would have done things very much the same way even if I had this wealth of information available to me that you now have.

There are many whom are successful at the wholesaling end of things, I am just not sure it is for me. Who knows? Maybe, someday. I will say this: every 'mistake' I made added to my education. I am a much savvier investor today because of some of those shortcomings of thought earlier on (some of which were only a few short years ago).

I will ditto pandora.com.

I recently found it as a free service thru my new blu ray player. I have now set up about 6 stations and am in the process of fine tuning them. It is actually fun. You end up with a radio station that plays only the music you like. Awesome!

I have been all over the media today to learn more on this. Anyone know how long he had been under investigation, ie - how long had his phones been tapped?