All Forum Posts by: Jeff Zimmerman

Hey Alex, you aren't wrong.  Deals have been much harder to find recently, especially after interest rates started to climb.  It sounds like a too simplistic of an answer but the reality is that you will find one, it's just going to be harder to find and may take some creativity in how you use it.  I.e. finding someone who doesn't mind selling you half of their multi family and you can work on it and improve the rents, then buy the seller out of it fully.  

Good luck! 

Sheila Kamps at Kamps insurance.  She just did a quote for me and it was expensive but she was able to get it done. Good luck! 

hey Dennis, the sunnyside area in Fresno is a great area and is off the radar of a lot of ma and pop SFH investors as well as first time new home buyers which makes for a lot less competition in the buying process, but rentals are popular. Sunnyside is a probably the lowest income area of the nice areas of Fresno (does that make sense?). $90,000 seems about right for the average household income of Fresno, it's not a high income city. At that ratio a family would be spending about 33% of their income on rent and that sounds about right as well. I usually allow someone to go up to 40% of their household income in my rentals.

As far as vacancy goes, you can plan on an SFH going vacant every 3-4 years on average. I've seen some renters stay 15-20 years and depending on what kind of tenants you have (i.e. college students) they may only stay a year but often the families renting a 4 bed don't want to move their kids and many times dont' buy a home for years if ever.

The primary occupation in Fresno is healthcare, with the largest healthcare employer being community regional medical centers followed by Saint Agnes hospital.  The region is AG based with Olam being the largest employer in that space.  The other big employers are the Fresno Unified school district - the 3rd largest school district in CA, Amazon, the IRS and city and county governments. 

rents are high mostly because we have a big housing shortage and there are no signs of housing meeting demand for a while as Fresno has a few policies that make it hard to annex land from the county so building is low. Clovis and Madera are able to keep building but not enough to keep up. 

I hope that helps, good luck!

hey Michael, awesome that you are getting started.  Fresno is a great place to look as we continue to grow in population and will continue to have a housing shortage for years to come.  Cash flow takes good vision and great "hunting" for the deal, but it's certainly possible.  Our appreciation has been through the roof and is much easier to come by especially with some value add instead of just having passive appreciation.  Last year when interest rates caused everything to slow, our average price/sqft only went down by 0.004%.  That should correct and go back up another 3% this year conservatively.  Overall we are optimistic on the Fresno market for long term holds.  It's a great market to look at and see if it fits your criteria.  Good luck! 

what's up Jordan, Fresno has been a pretty good market for me.  I've had properties here since 2011.  Covid pushed rents crazy high everywhere and Fresno was no exception, excluding 2020 and 2021,  my rents are still up on average about 8% year over year from 2018 (much higher if you include covid).  We are dealing with a big housing shortage in Fresno and it doesn't seem to be ending soon due to the fact that the city of Fresno is not able to annex much more area from the county to build on.  The city of Clovis is still able to annex so there is more building in Clovis but not nearly fast enough.  Until we can level out rents, rents and property values should be climbing pretty quickly. All that to say, the Fresno market has been really good and should be good from that standpoint.  If you have any specific questions on the market feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer or point you in the right direction.  Good luck! 

oh wow that's actually a good sample area, thanks for sharing that, that's going to be really helpful. 

that's really fascinating, I'm curious what they concider "Fresno" in their chart.  Fresno County includes quite a few mountain areas and I wonder if those are included in this chart since the chart peaks in the summer time.  

@Emily Anderson is there any data showing their sample areas?  thanks! 

Hey Tom, that's a great question.  I don't do short or medium term rentals myself so I can't speak into that directly, but I've worked with a number of clients that do.  I can say that from the description of your home, adding that second bath probably won't add a lot of appreciation value to the home so additional cash flow would be where the value would be. 

I wonder if you incurred the additional cost to put in a second bath, would it be too much more expensive to simply create two separate units and add a kitchenette into the second space?  then you'd have two units instead of one where nurses wouldn't have to share.  In my mind it seems like the best options may be to simply keep it as it is with only 1 bath OR create two separate units with a small kitchenette.  But again, I'm not really in that space so someone who has more experience may have a better opinion. Good luck! 

@Jims B. An estoppel should serve as good for the transaction, it's a legal document that the tenant has to sign stating if they are month to month, on a lease, etc....  Unfortunately we see this a lot with ma and pop Multi's, but those pain points are where the opportunity is, good luck! 

 sorry to hear that, is your property in Fresno?  that's where the managers are they I can refer to