All Forum Posts by: Joe Edmonds

@Kiet Ho, I did this, it’s a great way to learn the business. There’s always risk, but if you can cut your expenses in half, the risk is way lower. I’ve learned a lot from that!

Investment Info:

Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment in Batavia.

Purchase price: $86,000
Cash invested: $50,000

First investment property. Had a great contractor who finished a huge rehab in about 2 months.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

The book on rental properties (Brandon Turner). I rented my first house for 4 years after I moved into my second house and decided to reinvest to proceeds of the sale.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

Through a real estate agent that I trust. He was willing to write offers that most agents would try to talk me out of. My plan was to write 10 offers before expecting one person to entertain it. Surprisingly our first offer already got a counter offer.

How did you finance this deal?

I was very fortunate on the sale of my home and was able to do this with cash.

How did you add value to the deal?

We changed the floor plan a little bit to make a master suite instead of a strange room that was there before. We turned a useless porch into a bedroom, and added a common bath in the center of the bottom unit. The upstairs unit we had to redo the shower because it was only about 5 feet tall. We also had to add additional support to the foundation, and added Granite counter tops through the house.

What was the outcome?

Barely went over budget with lots of surprises, value skyrocketed and both units rented relatively quickly.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Permits are a huge pain. If you can avoid them, do so! You should never do work that wouldn't pass an inspection, but many cities are very hard to deal with and quite slow. Also, qualify the hell out of your tenants, plan to pass up on 4 or 5 to get to the right ones. It will be worth it.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

My real estate agent is relatively new, but he's outstanding. My contractor I'm convinced is as good as they come.

Cameron,

How cool that you're doing this at such a young age!  If it were me, I would absolutely finish college, but not for financial reasons.  Also, not sure where you get 25-50, when I ran my numbers, I could probably live on about 10 homes (15 or so doors).

I personally do this part time as part of the juggle of family, a job and owning another business (daycare center).  I would like to do this full time (in my mind that means semi retired), but each deal takes a lot of effort.  I bought my first duplex in December 2017 and rehabbed it, both units are rented and its about time I start looking at doing a cash out and getting another property.

At such a young age, I really just hope you have fun with this.  In many ways I'm quite envious of you.

Good luck, Joe

Thanks Bob. I definitely trust these tenants as much as any. This policy was one I planned out before I had tenants. I’m just starting to feel like this policy isn’t necessary, or maybe there’s a more creative way to handle it.

Not sure why it cut me off, but here’s the full post: So I’m a relatively new landlord, and I have a property with a basement I consider to be somewhat hazardous (more like a really large crawl space). To protect my own liability, I’ve locked the basement with a keypad you can change the password on, so I could provide a code and reset it next time I go there. The breakers, furnace and other things are down there that they may need to access. The power went out a few times on the block recently and they’re asking for the code “just in case”. If you were in my shoes, how would you handle this situation different? Here’s what I put in the lease about it. BASEMENT: The basement of the home will be locked for the duration of the lease. If there is an emergency that requires access to the basement, a lock combination will be provided for urgent access. After combination is provided, landlord will need access to the property to reset the combination.

So I’m a relatively new landlord, and I have a property with a basement I consider to be somewhat hazardous (more like a really large crawl space). To protect my own liability, I’ve