All Forum Posts by: David Krulac

In a neighborhood of single family house, that I owned a property, a contractor build a second separate house in his back yard to rent out.  He did this without any permits.  when he went ahead with his rental plans on the newly completed home, the city inspector came calling.  They told him that he could not ever rent the house because it was unpermitted.  He tried for 20 years to rent unsuccessfully.  He even offer to rent the property to the city rent free as a polling place twice a year, and the city turned him down.  A safety inspection would not make up for a building permit.  Some aspects of the building are hidden by finished features of the building.  On one of our major addition projects, done with all the building permits, the insulation had to be inspected by the city before drywall could start.  Surprisingly the "by the book" city inspector shut down our work project and sent all the workers home.  Our code violation... we had a staple for the insulation every 6 inches.  The Code requires a staple every 12 inches, so we had to remove 50% of the staples to be code compliant, and get the "Stop Work Order" removed. 

@Dylan Brown Thank you, very much.

@Jason Zundel Thanks much appreciated!

Saw a SF house for sale in an Opportunity Zone.  Is OP still available?  Does it expire the end of this year like other parts of the tax law?  Anybody have experiences with Opportunity Zones, both good and bad?  Was it worthwhile for you?  Thanks in advance.

@Joe Villeneuve is 100% correct.  An ADA compliant ramp must be 1 foot in length for every 1 INCH of elevation change.  Looked at a property that was 4 feet elevation change from street to front door and would require a 48 FOOT long ramp.  That was just not cost effective.  On the other hand if you make improvement to the property that are a benefit to the handicapped, your property will be a value to future tenants also who need those features, and very few properties have those features.  I built a house for a specific tenant, that had no steps inside or outside the house, plus other features such as a roll in shower with no lip, and no cabinets under the kitchen sink. That tenant is still there renting that same house for the last 25 years and just renewed their lease again.

Go to REIA meeting in the Indy area, maybe sponsor their meeting and put your name and business in front of investors looking for financing

The bank person may be asking, because you found such a great deal that they may think that either its not a arms length deal, like you're buying below market from your grandmother or other relative.  The other reason is they may think its too good of a deal that something might not be legit.  But in fact it really is none of their business, and of the more than 1,000 deals I have done I can't recall a lender ever asking me that question.

@Mario Gonzalez  I started with house hack in PA, and told that story in Bigger Pockets Podcast #82.  I bought a 3 br ranch house that was 17 years old at an auction from the state.  I rented out 1 or 2 bedrooms largely to people who worked at the same place as me.  Most of the time both extra bedrooms were rented and that covered my entire mortgage as well as 2/3 of the utilities.  They were rented on verbal leases with no long term commitment, but there was always a demand for rooms.  Some of the people stayed long term more than a couple of years.

Then the second property I bought was a 3 unit apartment building which also led to buying the 2 unit next door.

One other strategy you might use is to buy real estate within your Roth IRA or your Roth 401K and then all profit from rents and capital gains would be tax free.

I was a co-author and wrote of the Bigger Pockets book "Real Estate Rewind" which is a FREE download here at BP.  In it I said that if I could go back in time I would have bought FEWER properties, eliminating the ones that didn't make money or made money but were too little money to make them not worth the effort, time , money or risk involved.

" How I Turned $1,000 into Five Million in Real Estate" written by William Nickerson; taught me that an average person with average intelligence can succeed in real estate. I consider Nickerson to be the Godfather of Real Estate Investing. The book is 578 pages and filled with gems of real estate investing starting as a part time investor. I started with buying that first property as a house hack (described in Bigger Pockets Podcast #82) and went on to by and selling more than 1,000 properties.  I got the opportunity to meet William Nickerson, hear him speak and talk with him. He was down to earth and very humble.