All Forum Posts by: Johann Jells

Create an account on Google, upload it to Google Sheets, and share the doc.

All markets are different. 2% was never an option here, but I'd consider $200/door awful since doors here cost $100-300k.

I named ours after our bearded dragon lizard that had recently passed, and created a graphic logo from a photo of him to use on the letterhead. He's immortalized! Its also rather pompous sounding: ******* Enterprises LLC. Makes for a funny story with tenants.

Don't overthink it unless you plan on having one per property, then use the address. I can't imagine the paperwork for that, just one LLC is enough for me!

I don't know what a sun pump is, but 4500 gal is a lot of water! Is the meter in your house? Have you had it checked? Only scenario I see is if your main valve was leaky and you had a running toilet.

@Kenny Keating, it was nothing fancy. we pulled $80k of appreciation from our previous purchase for the downpayment. Our next one in 2012 that has done even better was indeed fancier, it was a short sale. But deals like that are long gone. What was relevant from that was the seller had tried to build an ambitious leveraged empire like many BPs recommend, but had ended up completely underwater and unable to service his debt, thus the short sale. We, relatively unambitious, weathered the 2008 storm just fine. Since we were not leveraged to the max, theoretical loss of equity meant nothing to us.

 Not to beat this to death, but if you have little or no net income from this property, how can you have a tax liability? That makes no sense.

As for the bigger picture since you are new here, the majority of BP's are in favor of low priced, low appreciation, high cashflow properties where the name of the game is constantly leveraging for more acquisitions. This is something of a long running battle for those of us in expensive, high appreciation markets who say there's more than one way to get rich in RE. Negative cashflow condos sell like hotcakes in my city, and not everyone buying them can be an idiot. It's a different, less active, "buy and hold" investing model that's that can pay off hugely if you've done it right.  But you need to study the numbers and decide where YOU think your rent and value are going, and what works for YOU. 

I bought a $385k neutral cashflow triplex in 2004 for $77k down.  It's now cashflowing >$20k annually (+$10k in mortgage paydown), and has more than doubled in value with the area gentrifying rapidly and the rents continuing to go up. BP gospel says that was a bad buy.

 Even so, you should not have any income to speak of. What number transferred from your E to 1040?

The most interesting "crazy" ideas I've read in the forums recently is the notion that GRM is not relative but absolute to price. That low priced Midwestern property is not low GRM directly because of location & demand, but a secondary effect because of the low prices those cause. This was expressed as "high priced properties don't cashflow". It seems true, but it might be inverse, that rents can only go so low no matter how cheap the property. This is how some of those places that sell for $20k are renting for $500. Insane to us in the NY area!

This makes no sense, you should have no taxes at all from this property after depreciation if it's only $200/m positive. Check your form E again.

Typically the cheap is "unmodified", and the more expensive is modified with latex polymers, which makes it more resilient. Both have their place, depending on tile type and substrate.   Given the cost of tile and time, it certainly isn't worth cheaping out on mortar, but modified is not always a better choice.  Learn more at johnbridge.com, an amazing site with forums, articles and e-book downloads. Every question you might have has already been asked, use the search engine.