All Forum Posts by: Jeff Zimmerman

Hi Danita, congrats on getting started!  You are way ahead of the game for your age.  

The Central Valley of CA in general will likely be the most affordable place to get started in CA.  A duplex that fits your criteria in Fresno will sell for about $400k-$500k, which means you would need about $30k for your down payment and closing costs, although sometimes we can weave closing costs into the purchase price either through the loan or by having the seller pay a portion, which may lower your cash needed.   

I highly suggest narrowing down to 2 or 3 cities/areas you like and then taking a drive through those places to see if they are the kinds of places you want to live.  You can even speak with a broker or agent ahead of time and ask them to give you some idea of which neighborhoods to drive through.  The right agent will be a wealth of knowledge and can help you narrow down neighborhoods, blocks and streets in their area based on your goals. They can even give you an idea of what the rent to cost to appreciation ratio will be in different places.  But overall, always put "boots on the ground" first, that's the biggest mistake I see new investors make, they don't know the area before buying. 

One last note on RE agents and brokers, get recommendations for agents from BP, friends, etc...Call and interview them and if they don't seem to have the knowledge you need or be the kind of person you want to work with, keep looking.  All agents will want you as a client and will say they work with investors, and they probably do to some extent, but their main goal will be to close instead of help you analyze something correctly.    Being an RE agent, I'm more than happy to give you some good questions to ask agents so you can screen them correctly.  Feel free to DM me if I can help more.  Good luck! 

Congrats Carlos, I'm glad that model is working well for you. You've received some good advice so far so I don't have much to add. One of the things that will be important moving forward is making sure you have enough parking for each tenant at the next home you purchase.  One of the issues I've seen repeatadly is that when investors buy homes for nurses there may not be enough parking in front of the house which causes tenants to park in front of the neighbors.  This is legal however sometimes it can upset the neighbors over time since they may not be able to park in front of their homes or all the different cars can make them nervous.  This can begin un-wanted attention on you and your business.  Neighbors tend to be nervous living next to short term rentals anyways so you want to do anything you can go keep them happy.  Good luck and let me know if I can help further! 

@Anurag T. good luck!  

Hey @Anurag T., new homes in Madera are fairly easy to rent out if they are in Tesoro Viejo or Riverstone.  They both have easy access to HWY 41 into Fresno.  Most of the people who are buying homes in those 2 communities are commuting into Fresno for work or school. Riverstone homes often come with extra requirements for water filtration on the homes, therefore some people prefer Tesoro but they are both great places. 

Other zip codes you can look into that are in Fresno or Clovis are 93720, 93730, 93619,93612,93611,93737,93727 (the SE areas of this zip code with newer homes that are in Sanger Unified).   3/2 newer homes that are the easiest to rent out are generally in the Clovis Unified Boundaries and in some cases the Sanger Unified boundaries.  Good luck! 

What's up Miguel, congrats on starting out.  I've been an investor in Fresno and Tulare county since 2011.  Feel free to reach out if you'd like to ask any questions about starting out or anything RE investment related.  Good luck! 

hey @Andrew Albritton, sorry that's a tough situation.  Best thing to do would be to speak with a good local CPA who can guide you through all of that.  I have one in Fresno, Roeser Accountancy that could help with this.  I also have a client in Turlock who could rec a good CPA up there as well.  Feel free to message me if you'd like to connect with him. Good luck! 

hey @Nathan Gagliardi, I've used Bill Roeser at Roeser accountancy for a while now and I've been very happy with them.  They are in the river park area.  If you call them feel free to let them know I sent you!  Good luck!  Feel free to let me know if you need any other recs. 

Hey @Abhishek Joshi, good questions. 

I think managing at a distance is fine, as long as you can get to the property once a month to check on it.  Sometimes issues can go unnoticed and get much more expensive if you can’t see the property physically for long periods of time.  If you have all your vendors ready to go ahead of time and ways for them to get into the home if the tenant isn’t there you should be ok. 

It may be hard to find a management company that will rent out the property without doing the management, so I’d try and find one before you make the decision to self manage at a distance. That seems like an ideal situation if you are going to manage at a distance but it could be hard to find since managers like to do full management not all-a-cart. 

It’s good to screen tenants with all the standard checks, however I put the most stock in rental history.  For instance if someone has a really low credit score but their previous landlord said they were an ideal tenant and they passed income requirements I may take them.  But someone with a high credit score without previous landlord rec’s or bad rental history may not make the cut for me. 
good luck!  Feel free to DM me if there is anything else I can help with. 

hey Jerome, we've had a lot of great success on Facebook marketplace, lots of people are using that for all kinds of things, it's pretty much the new craigslist.  Speaking of that, I'd probably try craiglist as well since it's free.   Because we use Buildium it shoots our vacancies out to all the big sites like Apartments.com, Zillow, etc.  We don't like to leave any stone unturned. 

I'd probably try FB marketplace first and see how it goes, then if that doesn't help look for a good advertising platform like buildium (which is probably too robust of a tool for what you need right now, but something with just that advertising feature).  But I think that considering the area you are in FB marketplace will likely get it done. 

Good luck! I'm always happy to help, feel free to shoot me a message if you have other questions. 

what's up mike, we have quite a few in our office that may be able to help you out.  feel free to message me with what you are looking for and maybe we have a fit for you.  Have a great day!