All Forum Posts by: James Mc Ree

It's a good concern. Try to track days on market and price trends to see how well an area is selling.

There is a housing shortage in general, so every house will eventually be a home. The key question is, "At what price?" You should think about what you would offer with regards to your competition and compare rents. You can price your rental near the bottom of your comparable competition to rent faster. Alternatively, you can offer more such as central air when the competition doesn't have it.

Avoid areas with a lot of new rental deliveries. Philadelphia as a city is nowhere near saturated, but you aren't buying the city. You are buying 1 property in a local neighborhood. Philly can vary quite a bit street-to-street. Look at that property's immediate area. It's all location, location, location. The suburbs are good areas for prospecting too.

Check to see if appealing your tax assessments would be worthwhile. That might lower your taxes.

Look at what you are really getting for your insurance premium with regard to your intent to use it. I think of insurance as what covers disasters (fire, flood, medical liability, etc) and set my deductible at 5% which makes for a lower premium. Others want to use insurance for everything and have a $500 deductible and a higher premium.

You could try the AirBnB business for a year or two with a property to see how it goes. It's not a one-way choice. You can switch anytime to another strategy. It is more time consuming if you are managing it all yourself.

You didn't list selling a property as an option to pay down loan principle. I would consider that if cash flow is tight across your whole portfolio. It's a way of jumpstarting your payoff plan.

Benjamin Moore Light Pewter and Revere Pewter were 2 of my main colors. They are both shades of gray. I dropped Revere Pewter and have mostly used Light Pewter as a common color in the house with kitchens and bathrooms being something colorful, usually blue for kitchens and green for bathrooms.

I use HD Behr Marquee which is around the middle of HD paints in quality. I've gone higher in quality, but the paint is thicker and a little harder to spread or I just wasn't used to it. I only tried the higher quality because of a sale and didn't see the value. I've recently been getting ceiling paints that go on pink and dry white to make it easier to see what spots were missed. My contractor initially laughed at me, then found it was helpful when he used it.

Have you replaced your water heater anode rod with a powered anode rod, such as one from Corro-Protec?

The Corro-Protec marketing claims are they are a once-and-done replacement that extends your water heater's lifespan to 20+ years. No more rod replacements needed, unless it breaks. The materials also claim the powered rods help reduce sediment. What have your experiences been? I am considering them for my SFR rentals for which I've done no water heater maintenance. I'd like to start with flushing every few years and replacing the anode rod every 5 years or just once with one of these powered rods.

I am skeptical of the very positive product reviews since the review really needs to be submitted 10+ years after the installation to be meaningful and they never are.

I screen Section 8 tenants just like traditional tenants. Apply the same requirements and count the support they receive as income for them.

You are looking for a combination of 3 things: sufficient vacant land, residential and commercial, all in 1 property and affordable. That is a lot to ask if your client also cares about the location. You can probably do it in areas without zoning or farmland, but it is very difficult in a traditional residential zone.

Your best bet is to look for areas along busier roads that are currently residential and turning commercial or already turned commercial with lingering residential. These properties probably already have what you are looking for, but might not be vacant land.

Adding a commercial use to a residential zone is done through either rezoning or a use variance. Rezoning may work if the property is right on a residential/commerical zone boundary, but probably won't work otherwise as it would be considered spot zoning.

Use variances are very difficult to get because you have to show the property cannot be used for its currently zoned purpose. You do this by showing a hardship that is not self-created. I don't see how you would do that with a parcel that can be developed for its approved zoning. You might have an easier time buying a parcel and subdividing it into residential and commercial lots, then proposing the commercial use variance just for the commercial lot.

Doing all of this research on your client's behalf is mighty generous and very time consuming for you. My recommendation is for your client to figure out where they want to be, then talk with the local government about what options are available.

Good luck!

Look at the town's zoning map for the area around your property. You should have zero chance of zoning to residential if the property is right in the middle of a commercial zone. You will have a better chance if it is on the fringe of the commercial zone.

Next, look at the town's comprehensive plan. They may have a different name for it. It is a future plan for how the town sees itself developing. It is good for you if the plan shows the area turning residential, but not if the long term plan is for commercial. My guess is it will be headed towards commercial only because that is more common.

Long term, you will probably be better off with a commercial zone. An over/under type building could have businesses on the under and homes above. In the more distant future, maybe the area turns more commercial and Walmart wants to buy the property. 8-)

RoundUp and pre-emergent weed blockers/killers, and landscape fabric under crushed stone or river rock will be your friends for the landscaping work.

Trash requires a bit more info. Trash just in front of your property tells you who you need to talk with. Trash everywhere is a neighborhood concern and maybe also a trash hauler concern. In that case, you might want to engage the city to encourage better use of trash containers with lids, talk with the hauling company, etc.

Try calling local real estate brokers. They will all have an in-house service you aren't interested in, but my recommend other title companies. Likewise, try going to your local investors' meeting and ask the attendees.

This question is probably more of a qualitative assessment than one based on hard data. You may want to dig deeper if you think you have a situation title companies don't see often.

OP didn't mention he had a property manager. He may be doing that himself plus the bookkeeping, so the advice above may be to considering hiring a property manager, CPA and/or bookkeeper. That's a big change from a do-it-yourself hands-on operation. It is neither right nor wrong, just a big change.

If you go all-in on that route, you will be paying a bit more and have all of your real estate time back as you will have much less involvement. That can be a wonderful thing as you will have more time for your family. It may also be a downer if you got into real estate partly to enjoy the business.

Think about why you are invested in real estate besides making money. Does this change positively or negatively impact that?

Consider doing a time study of where your time goes for your real estate business. Keep track of what you do each day for real estate and how much time it takes. You might be surprised to see some tasks are taking a lot more time than you think they should and maybe you are diving a little too deep into those items or need some automation.

I self-manage 13 SFRs with a set of linked Excel spreadsheets. I take all of the tenant calls, do all my own taxes and do almost none of the physical work. I hire contractors for that. I had a W2 job until I retired about a year ago when I wanted more time for family and noticed my real estate business was stealing time from my W2 job. I had a very flexible schedule at my job and probably flexed it too much. The schedule worked fine when I wasn't renovating a property, but the renovations took a good bit of time to self-manage.

You may find managing stable properties doesn't take much time, but renovations or other work does. Maybe it can be outsourced.

Just some things to think about...