All Forum Posts by: Jason Burr

Insurance, including a good umbrella policy.

This is exactly why I am 100% behind using a PM, though I cant blame any PM's for not wanting to take on rentals in these areas. Its only 10% of my rent per month but to me its fantastic insurance and someone else to do the work for me and deal with these situations.

I had a friend I used to work with, she bought the house down the street and renovated it, luckily for her she had a PM. She came home one day and there were cop cars and police tape everywhere. She found out that the tenant had committed suicide by shooting himself in the living room. It shook her up a little, but the PM dealt with everything, getting the house cleaned, police paperwork etc. She never had to see any of it, and I think thats the only reason she opted to keep the house and was able to deal with it emotionally.

@Ben Leybovich Long Island is also pretty landlord unfriendly. When you evict someone, which takes up around 6 months, the landlord must pay for a moving company to put the tenants belonging in a storage facility, then, the landlord must pay for the storage place for I believe at least two months!

"At the time of the  evictions, the landlord will be required to provide all necessary manpower and  materials to complete the eviction as expeditiously as possible.  The personal  property of the tenant must be moved to a place where the tenant can recover it  without unreasonable difficulty.  This requires the landlord/ attorney to  provide a minimum of four people to do the moving.  All expenses will be  incurred by the landlord.  The landlord assumes any responsibility for damage to  the property during the moving/ storage of the property.  The landlord may not  break into the dwelling, may not move a tenant’s belongings out and may not turn  off the heat and utilities.  The sheriff is the only person who may remove  property from the premises and this can be done only after the landlord has been  awarded a warrant and their personal property must be physically removed from  the premises described in the warrant.  There is no “lockout”.  The landlord (at  his expense) must provide proper moving & storage, off site, by and insured,  competent mover.  The removed goods must be stored in a secure storage within  the county."

@Jason Burr, since I currently have a W2 job, I am looking for the majority of my REI business to be buy-and-hold deals run with a property manager. However, my work is in the residential building products industry and it gives me access to a number of great contractors and general handy men, so I would like to try my hand at a few lower end flips as well. The flips will mostly be used to fund more acquisitions of buy-and-holds... All this being said with zero experience in the game and just my educated guess.

Thanks for the kind words and advice. I just want to get my foundation before I jump in and that's why I wanted to get the LLC setup. Though I am not wealthy, I do have assets that I would like to make sure are protected from law suits.

And yes! I joined Upstate CREIA 2 wees ago and have been to two meetings. I was really bummed out when the one this past Monday was cancelled due to bad weather!

Are you a member? Hopefully we can meet up sometime and I can pick your brain. I'll buy the coffee!

I see all these posts about frozen pipes 1500 miles to our south and wonder "how" and "why".   Do builders down there run plumbing out against the sheathing on external walls?  I just looked at the weather profile for Newport News - it's definitely been relatively cold compared to what is listed as normal, but it's not really that cold.  We just finished almost 4-weeks with highs <= -17C (0F) and lows down into the -30s and never had a frozen pipe.    

Three years ago, we had a pipe freeze that was run along the sill in an old rubble basement.  We insulated the sill and headers, then wrapped the pipe and there have been no further problems.

Is it a difference in building techniques (insulation, location of plumbing runs, etc) which contributes to the seemingly high incident of frozen pipes?