All Forum Posts by: John Morgan

@Henry Centola

I'm doing a cash out refi on a rental I own outright now. Just had the appraisal yesterday. The lender is giving me 75% LTV at a 4.125% rate on a 15 year. PM me if you want the contact info on this. So far so good with this bank!

@adianna Diaz 

I would call Kimberly Dorsett at All County management group to pick her brain. She managed one of my ft worth properties that had a sec 8 tenant in it. She will tell you what the going rate is for the neighborhood your property is in and the demand. Housing tenants are easy. They get a voucher for a certain amount and they pay the extra $ needed for the cost of rent which is usually much more than their voucher. All County managed one of my properties and handled all of that. I highly recommend them. I did absolutely nothing. They charge 10% rent and wired me money into my bank account each month. Message me for her contact info since I can’t list them on this forum  

I can give you my opinion of the rent rate and hood your property is in if you message me the address. Let me know if you have any questions. I know good trustworthy affordable contractors and specialists if you have any maintenance issues as well. I know how stressful it can be managing a property out of state. I own an out of state property in Missouri and can relate to the unknowns you might deal with!

@Adriana Diaz

I live in Grand Prairie, TX next to Mansfield and have 5 rentals in this area. Here’s what I do and it works great when I need tenants out here. I list my rentals on Zillow and include 10 pics. They send the listing out to Trulia and hot pads and other sites. It’s all for free. Do it on Zillow manager. It’s all free. You can put a description in and say whatever you want. The rental market is hot out here and I usually have dozens of inquiries the first couple days I list my properties ...with emails and text messages. Then I meet with a few of them and have the ones I’m interested in apply online with Zillow. It costs them $29 for their whole background check which you get back in a couple minutes. This whole process is free! And I get a huge response every tine. I just listed a four bedroom property in ft worth and had 4 families wanting it that day. They all had deposit $ and were ready to move in on the spot. One family offered me an extra $200 if I picked them. And said they’d pay me an extra $50/month on top of the listed $1,400/month rent.

Let me know if I can help you out or if you have questions. You can send me the addresses and I can give you my opinion on your price point. I know the area pretty well and know what the going rent is and demand.

Another option is a management company. I use a great one for one of my ft worth properties. They are great and will do everything for you. I think they collect half of your first months rent to find people. But they are big and find people fast. Let me know if you want to talk to them I can link you up.

Your other option is sec 8 housing. I have one tenant that is on housing. Tarrant County pays me $1,075/month rent and they pay the rest above and beyond that. There aren’t enough houses for rent on housing. Both ft worth housing and Tarrant County are so impacted they can’t accept any more applications or people because they don’t have enough homes for rent on housing. My management company deals with sec 8 housing so that’s an option. They pay on time every month and they tend to be lifers. So less turnover for you.

Let me know if I can help. I know it must be frustrating trying to do this out of state and having it sit empty without rent for so long.

I just used Zillow’s background check for my two tenants last week and it worked like a champ. They charge $29 and it was easy and quick. I didn’t credit them their $ back. Not sure if most do that or not. Maybe I should?

I use Zillow to list my rentals online for free. You can put in 10 pictures. And they send out this same free listing to Trulia and Hot Pads. I always get a tremendous response from them and find good tenants within a couple days.

@Joanne Hanson

I really enjoy it. I post my properties for rent on Zillow for free and get a lot of people inquiring about it right away. My tenants text me when they have a maintenance problem. Then I text someone to go fix it. No hassle, no sweat.

My only advice is to start the eviction process right away when they are late. I’ve been burned twice in the last year by being too nice and listening to their problems. Let the courts handle it. That will save you thousands. This is a business and we put our hard earned $ into this investment. Good luck!

@Anthony Wick

225k, 130k, 125k, 100k, and 48k. 

1993, 2007, 1959, 1959, and 1958

I wasn’t prepared for 3 foundations shifting causing cracks and stuck doors all at about the same time..but that’s normal for the Dallas area. The house I bought for 48k had a known foundation problem. I got that house for 50k under market value because it needed some work and didn’t have an HVAC system etc..just window units. I got them all about 15k under market value so I factored in repairs when I made offers on them. I was just hoping I could get a few years out of them before they all fell apart. 

Solo

@Jordy Train

I’m going to still stick with 50k cash reserves for all six of my rentals. I cash flow about 3k/month total combined with them right now. So usually if I have a maintenance issue I have plenty of cash to cover the expense. Last summer was just pure bad luck. 

@Anthony Wick

I live in North Texas where foundations are a problem. I had 4 out of my 5 Texas properties have doors that wouldn’t shut and cracks in walls last July. That cost me 19k in foundation repairs. Had to repair interior wall cracks and new paint to three of them for 6k. Then I had four HVAC units go out within a few weeks of the foundations being repaired. And of course I’m on vacation when a couple of my ACs went out! That was another 18k. Two of these homes were really old and needed an updated electrical box to handle the new HVAC units properly which cost $3,500. Needed a new roof on one which cost me 5.5k. Siding rotted out on one so had to replace that with new outside paint which was 4K. Plumbing leak under foundation slab was $1,800. Water leak on another cost me $1,200. Water leak found on another cost me 3k which included new floors. Had to remodel a bathroom due to plumbing leak. And do major sheet rock on one unit that had water damage and had to repair burned up walls in the garage due to my tenant’s dryer catching on fire. 

All this happened over a few months. I thought 50k cash in the bank would be a decent reserve for my 6 rentals. I was wrong. I needed 70k for these random repairs over just a few months. Ouch. But I also feel I had an anomaly of bad luck over a short period of time. This seemed to be a little extreme. But as Kevin O’Leary always says, “Poop happens” so be prepared. I hope things calm down this year and I can build up my cash reserve. I had to take out a no interest loan for 18 months to pay for some of this. And needless to say, my wife who hates me being involved in real estate hasn’t been happy with my investment in real estate so far. Haha. I’ve only been doing it for four years. I’m determined it’ll get better!

I only have 6 SFRs and got torched last summer on random things breaking. My rule of thumb was to have 10k for each property sitting in savings for the unexpected. I only had 50k and was getting cocky since everything had been running smooth for awhile. However, I had 70k worth of unexpected things breaking on my properties within a 5 month period. I got caught with my pants down and burned through all my 50k cash in what felt like a nano second. My advice is to have at least 10k per property! If you don’t, just make sure you have easy access to borrow some coin to pay off the unexpected. And trust me, Murphy will show up on you once in awhile and you better be ready to pay up.