All Forum Posts by: Jeff Morelock

Sounds like it works, what has your friend said about it? Maybe you can keep your $25k and put it into a deal with your friend. 

One thing to remember with ALFs is that you're pretty much leaving the real estate business and entering into the health care field, so education is very important. I am not familiar with the Residential Assisted Living Academy, but I can answer your timeline question. 

First it depends on the state. I am in Florida and it takes about a year to convert a house and get it licensed. That does not include hiring and filling your ALF with happy residents, so you may want to call your state's agency that regulates the industry and ask if they give you an average time frame. 

One more thing... if you only have a limited "education" budget for now, I'd suggest taking whatever course your state requires to get an Assisted Living Facility Administrator, even if you don't plan to run day to day operations at your ALF. You need to know your state's laws and regulations in order to "manage" the administrator you hire.

Sometimes its easier just to buy a small facility that is already up and running.

In Florida anyway, ALFs must all have a licensed administrator that takes a course and gets certified or licensed. He or she, along with the staff run the day to day operations. Even so, there's really no way to avoid being in the healthcare biz completely, because you will still want to manage you managers at the very least. In order to do this effectively and profitably, you need to know your state's rules and regulations to make sure your manager is following them. For example here in Florida, ALFs are now mandated to install generators after the past hurricane seasons beat us up. 

Six bed and smaller ALFs are very popular in Florida. The main thing I tell my clients is that they have to realize they are almost leaving the real estate business and entering the health care business when they open an ALF. Its not easy, and its not a get rich quick thing either. You clients/residents will be trusting your facility with their lives or the lives of their aging parents.

While doing my research I realized that owning an ALF is stepping outside the real estate business and into the healthcare field. Oceans of red tape must be navigated, but if done correctly, very much worth the journey. 

Since the Tampa Bay Market is really hot right now, it is hard to keep even a marginal property on hand. I seldom have to put anything into MLS anymore. Even crappy little $40,000 condos in crappy areas are selling within hours. Ya have to have a quick trigger finger around these parts lol.

There's hundreds of us, some licensed some not. What are you looking to do?

If you can afford it, I'd suggest adding central, especially if your exit strategy involves selling it later on. If there are two otherwise identical houses for rent, one with central and one with window-bangers, I think the one with central will be the one most renters pick.

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Best carpet for a rental is tile lol.