All Forum Posts by: Josephine Wilson

I did a full repipe with Plumb Plumbing and they pulled the permit for me. All in all, they were okay, with speed being the strong point. 

@Rob Malda Great point. It's an inflation hedge. And since all my money is in mutual funds, maybe it's time to get on the bandwagon.

@Ben Leybovich You could push rents by $200, not $350, but yeah, I get what you are saying. It does cash flow better with some upgrades. So I guess I need to look for places with some upside potential. There must be a few dumps around here still!

@Account Closed Wow, thanks for sharing your experiences. Amazing profit on this one! I enjoyed learning about your tenant issues. So they were trying to steal the coins out of the laundry machine and yet somehow they came up with rent each month?

It sounds like the right broker and property manager were key to your success. Did you keep the property manager from the previous owner or bring in someone new? Can I ask which neighborhood the building was in?

@Joe Villeneuve Woah, Joe, I'm sensing a podcast appearance here!

@Rene Owczarski Yeah, I wouldn't have thought restaurant worker was that different from grocery store worker. They both sell food. But these days, they are miles apart in terms of ability to pay. 

Have you thought about the solar-powered motion-detection lights? They have really improved in the past few years, both in terms of brightness and how long they stay on when triggered. Look for at least 800 lumens. 

I have eight of these lights installed at my residence and they are great. They cost about $10 each on Amazon. About 20% of them fail within the year, but at that price, who cares. You can put them all over the property, even places where you don't have an electrical line! No electrician required. 

Encouraging responses here. It will be interesting to see what happens now that the stimulus payments have expired. 

Have you considered an irrigation system? This would free the tenant from regular watering. I don't know how things grow in LA, but in AZ, you can get away with an irrigation system and twice annual tree trimming/yard clean up. You would have to be confident the tenant would a) not turn off the system and b) apprise you of any leaks. 

I looked at them for my town and concluded the same - not the best neighborhoods and you have to invest for 10 years to get the full benefit. It also seemed like some of the incentives expired at the end of 2019? Not totally sure on that. Also keep in mind that capital gains tax only kicks in in a certain income tax bracket. If you have enough above the line deductions, you may be able to push yourself into the 0% capital gains bracket and pay nothing. Typically, if you are making $120K or more, this is not possible, but when we were making $110K as a couple, we got 0% cap gains by using a lot of above the line deductions. Or at least I think that's what we did. I'm not a tax expert. 

Personally, it seemed like a 1031 exchange was the better way to go for tax management, as opposed to the opportunity zones, but I would be interested to hear what more experienced people have to say.