All Forum Posts by: John Lenhart

@Allyssa McCleery  whether it is worth it to do a 1031 depends on if you have taxes you want to defer that are more than the cost of the 1031. A standard 1031 forward exchange will cost between $1200-$2000. If your tax bill is less than that, certainly a 1031 does not make sense. If it is more than that, it depends on how much you personally want to save in taxes. 

@Sonny Sach -  I do invest in multi-family properties. Lindhal  does a good job at explaining the basics to beginners starting out. I have been to other events besides his and they are very similar, good networking opportunities, but are always looking to up-sell. That is not a bad thing, and certainly they provide very valuable info despite some of the sales culture.

I had thought about attending a Lindhal seminar in the past and have always thought his books and other training materials are pretty good.  

As far as good speakers or topics. I would recommend attending OREIA in November. It is Ohio focused but they bring in national speakers and trainers on a ton of topics.  https://oreiaconvention.com/

The speakers give an overview but if there are any you like, they often offer longer bootcamps and such. It gives you a chance to sample a ton at the same meeting. 

@Steve Sell I started in 2008 acquiring a couple 4 families and a college rental duplex. We cash flowed similar to you and just continued to roll the profits over to the next building and build that way for a while. We originally planned to build like you did and not sell, but someone needed to do a 1031 and made an offer on a couple 4 families of ours that we could not refuse and it allowed us to buy a bigger commercial apartment building. We did our own 1031 at the time, but we also learned the benefit to having larger multi-unit buildings at the time and we then decided to sell of the rest of our 2 and 4 family property and move them into larger units. 

@Steve Sell - 2 reasons why larger is better. 1) you get better economies of scale. Only one manager is needed for 100 units and they are a lot easier to manage if they are under one roof or one location than if they are spread across town.  You have fewer roofs, fewer mechanical issues (for the most part). It is easier to run a 40 unit location than it is to run ten 4 families. 

2) SFH, Duplexes and 4 families trade on a sales comp basis. Therefore, if you have the best 4 family on the block and your rents are 3x as high as your competitors on the same block, you do not get rewarded when you sell for your good management. Yes, you still get the increased cash flow while you operate, but you still trade for the comps that the neighborhood generates. With a larger building, you can get price appreciation if you have good management and financials.

These are the reasons why we traded out of your 4 family product. You mentioned you have a newer 12 plex. Give it a while, I bet you will see that the 12 plex is easier to manage than the SFH or even the 4 families.

Never studied Grant Cardone, but that is how we built our portfolio of a couple hundred units.  Started with a 4 family. Used a number of 1031's to get larger properties. So yes, the principle works

I have not taken his course but read a few of his books when I started out and bought a mini program of his about 10 years ago. Again, did not do the 3 day course but his books were good. 

It will depend how up to date the county records are and if your county requires such registration. 

Since when is trying to evict someone who refuses to pay the rent predatory? 

check out Innago.com it is free to use and they only charge you a fee if your tenant uses their processing services. It is a great option for a smaller owner with under 100 units

@Shawn Kenyon

When someone comes to us with an exotic animal for a service pet we fall back on our insurance policy when denying them the ability to keep the pet. It would not be deemed reasonable for a landlord to put their insurance in jeopardy to accommodate a service animal. Where it complies with existing pet policy or does not require an additional burden on the landlord to reasonably accommodate the pet, that is one thing, but where a tenant wants to keep their emotional support raccoon or llama or even pit bull, you can refer back to your insurance policy and deny that request because allowing it would not constitute a reasonable accommodation