All Forum Posts by: Jennifer Streamer

I have rentals in Royal Oak.  I find the best way to track the market is to sign up for alerts on zillow and trulia to email all new rentals every morning.  If I see a property similar to mine, I glance through the photos and note the location. It keeps me up to speed on what's going on.

The inspectors only look at the outside of the property.  

With a fairly standard 30 year mortgage, I find that if the rent is above 1% of the purchase price, we do all right.  That depends on the amount of work the house needed up front.  Right now, it's uncommon to find a place that makes sense.  That being said, rents have gone up very nicely over the last couple of years.  We started out just above 1%, but now we're well above that.  We're also at $1600 for a 3/1 with a garage and a basement.  

It's competitive.  You need to move fast for most properties. If it's priced right, you'll need to have your offer in the day that it is listed.  Sometimes properties are priced too high and so they sit.  We put in an low offer on New Year's eve on a great place on Hudson that had been on the market for 6 months.  They had started out way too high and didn't get in the right price range until the winter slump.  That was a win for us!  Everybody else was finishing their Christmas cookies :-)

Rentals are in high demand.  It will be easy to find tenants.  If you screen well, you should have no difficulty finding good tenants.  Our properties aren't fancy, but they're clean and comfortable.  

If you ever want to talk further, let me know.

@Fernando Domingo  good luck with your investing.  Let me know if I can ever help out.

I have a few tips about Hazel Park.  I don't own anything in Hazel Park, but have investigated the possibility.  I moved on to other cities because of a couple of things.  The first is not a deal breaker, but it's something to be aware of.  Inspectors and the city are tough to work with.

Second, be aware that the non-homestead taxes are very high.  Here are the annual taxes on a 120k house in each of the following cities:

Hazel Park: $5627

Royal Oak: $3467

Madison Heights (Lamphere Schools): $3748

Oak Park (Berkley Schools): $4855

Finally, I discovered insurance is higher in Hazel Park.  

Basically, I realized that my monthly payment with a 30 year mortgage, tax and insurance was roughly the same if I bought a 160k property in Royal Oak or a 120k property in Hazel Park.  

Since the rent in Royal Oak is greater, I have a higher return on the 160k property in Royal Oak.  The down payment is more, naturally, so it may be possible to do better in Hazel park because you are able to buy more homes - especially if you're buying the lower cost homes.  Also, Hazel Park may have more potential for appreciation.  In my mind, it has a loong way to go.

 Thank you, David :-)  

Thanks for the feedback, Will.  You know - I probably would not have charged the late fee, but I was swayed by all of the hard-nosed advice in this thread!  Maybe many of the others are in tougher neighborhoods with more challenging tenants?  I don't know.  But I appreciate another opinion!!  

@george paiva that's a good suggestion.  I wasn't sure if I was overreacting because it wasn't very long, just seemed out of character.  But my gut was right.

@Kevin Phu  thanks for the kind words.  I'll have to get far more cynical before I don't care about someone's well being!  In almost 10 years we've never had an eviction or a problem, so maybe I'm naive.  We only have 5 rentals and all are in nice areas.

@John Casmon  I meant I wasn't sure if I should waive the fee and was reflecting that a credit card company likely would, so should I?  I didn't waive the fee and I'm not sure if I feel right about that even now.  

Agreed- I hope this isn't part of a pattern!