All Forum Posts by: Ke Nan Wang

Please keep in mind the 3x rent is probably in reference to smaller 1 bed to 2 bed units. In our area, where a 3 bedroom is renting at $2000+, I do not see any person paying $6000+ a month for a short stay no matter how much money they make. They can easily book plenty airbnb for around $4000 per month. 

There is a bigger pock podcast episode on this topic. One of my takeaway from that guest was: 

1. Go directly to the hospital or corporation and ask them the point of contact of the agencies who handle the contract relocation package. Build a relationship with these people. Then when you sign a lease, you are signing a lease with the agencies, not the tenant. Easier to get paid and maybe handle dispute (question mark?) 

2. You need to have consistent inventory and be a serious player to pull #1 off, assuming you are in a competitive market. Relocation agencies don't want to deal with property owners who only have one or two units where they would call you and you have nothing available for them. Then they will just stop calling you. Some areas those agencies don't even talk to you unless you have a number of units in your portfolio, which is very understandable. 

If you aren't ready to do that, then I think furnishfinder is a good start. Just go to furnishfinder and look for comparable properties and how much are those renting. The number I'm seeing there in my area do not work for 3 bedroom houses. They may work for a 1 bedroom unit. 

@Joseph Beilke I think @Jason Crowe meant the $160,000 includes the purchase price. Otherwise it would be a lesson learned what not to do. Also $160,000 is almost enough for me to build this house brand new here in St. Augustine, which is 40 min south of Jacksonville. 

If my assumption is correct, then this was a nice flip. Congratulations @Jason Crowe

Hi @Alexis Hernandez, I'm a licensed contractor in Florida and have been doing rehabs and new constructions for years. 

I'm assuming you are doing this long distance correct? Otherwise I would just go pull the tape on the property in person. Make an appointment first of course. 

In our county's property appraiser's website, which existing property would have a rough digital floor plan that shows its outside parameter and main spaces (conditioned, garage, porch etc.) Do you have this on the property appraiser's website? Once you have the parameter, linear foot is very easy to estimate. Sometimes the building department would have an archive of blueprints of the house. For our building department is 10 years. I wouldn't figure a less than 10 year old house needs a rehab but it's another resource for you where you can get your hands on building blueprints and it cost you nothing.  

Another thing is you really don't need to do it for every house, you will figure this out once you start doing it. You will find similar sq ft, similar layout houses will have about the same cost in those items you mentioned. You don't need it done to the penny. You can estimate in thousands of dollars and that should be good enough for your analysis. 

Like for me, I know a new gutter for 1600 sq ft - 2000 sq ft house cost about $2000-2500. A siding job will cost about $6000-8000 labor and material and exterior paint is about $2500 to $3000 for the entire house. And that's good enough to do rehab estimate. You always want to err on the high side then put about 10-20% on top of the total cost depend on how confident you are with your number because it will always cost more in practice. 

Hi @Doug Fluckiger lot's of good feedback here. I would say if you want some real constructive criticism, probably it's best to share your listing here so people with experience and success can weigh in and give you some free coaching tips. 

I was curious about your comment saying you had a few 30 day + tenants from Airbnb, you loved them but not enough to pay the bill. How could this happen? Do you mind to elaborate on the number? Seems like you should focusing on optimize this revenue stream. 

When starting out something, I'm all about finding one thing that works for you and repeating it and make it so good that you can do it in your sleep. Once you have your base built on this one thing, then start breaching out trying other things. You can try other things in the beginning but not in a sense that's hurting your main gig. It seems like Airbnb is your initial success and I would keep filling up your unit with Airbnb guests and then looking for other places to secure more MTR tenants. 

Many good comments here, especially @Nathan Gesner's book recommendation. 

Here is what I do for listing my properties:

Clean up and do all necessary repair/maintenance to make sure the property is clean, safe and functional. Tighten up the yard to boost curb appeal. Use a professional photographer to take good pics. 

Then advertise it on Zillow, Realtor.com, and Facebook Marketplace. As a real estate agent I also advertise it on the local MLS but I rarely get a tenant from the MLS. Nowadays most tenants come from zillow and its affiliates.

When I get prospect wanting to schedule showings, first I talk to them on the phone and just go over the requirements in the Ad. You can count on most people don't read the description of your Ad so better to have a verbal confirmation before spending time doing the showing. I usually try to group all showings on the same day into one time window, like a mini open house so I'm minimizing my time spent on showing. 

I use TurboTenant to screen my tenants. I have tried many third party platforms in the past and in my opinion TurboTenant has been so far the best. I've even tried RentRedi here, still didn't like it compared to TurboTenant. 

Reasons: 

Clean and simple user interface. 

Affordable and effective background check. Their background check seem to be more effective because I get traffic violations as well. I feel many other third party platform who screen tenant background most time come back clean and sometimes in reality, it's not the case. I also check county court cases and see if there's anything open against them. Often I found stuff where the third party platform fails to find. And Turbotenant has been able to match what I find in the county. Not sure why. 

The platform prompt the applicants to upload all of their documents. I don't know how does the platform do it so effectively but TurboTenant is the only place I receive all the attachments I want most of the time. Of course, if the applicant deliberately decides to skip uploading documents, then I don't get them. But I would say 90% of the applicants from Turbotenant I automatically receive a copy of their ID, paystubs or bank statement. Not the same case with other platform I've tried, I always have to ask them separately to show proof of what they claimed in the application. Not a deal breaker for me, just a feature that's really nice. 

Lease, you can use standardized form from your state. For us, we used our own forms that's been initially drafted by an attorney and continuously tweaked by us over the years. We are very familiar with our state landlord and tenant laws and we review it constantly. And we learn from our past mistakes to improve our lease agreement. We try to set very clear expectations in the lease agreement and spell out responsibilities between landlord and tenants. 

As far as payment goes, we use apartment.com for our automatic payment services but now it seems like TurboTenant has one as well and we are trying it out with our upcoming tenant in one of our units. You can also accept cash/check. You need to check your state law about accepting partial rent. For some state, accepting partial rent will reset the eviction process. 

Lastly, learn every word and take it to heart about how to handle security deposit based on your state/local laws. Security deposit dispute is the most litigated cases in landlord/tenant court cases. I know a tenant, who moved to a different city, took one of my friends to court for a $300 dispute. My friend ended up winning but just a reminder to be cautious with handling security deposit. Dot your i's and cross your t's on this one particular procedure. 

Best of luck to your Landlord journey. 

@Imebette Barkley Just curious, what's driving you to make these purchase decisions? Feel like they are just market price to me so if you want to make money, the market needs to appreciate a bunch. Are you looking to park the money at some place and just want to make money in cash flow? 1031 exchange? Worrying about the US Dollar crashing so need to get into RE ASAP?

@Evan Kline Thank you for the insight. Awesome tip about that airbnb search. Now I see 3/2's are going for 4k-5k a month in the area for similar condition houses. That still doesn't mean people would actually rent those houses but at least the market is there. Furnishfinder is probably geared towards 1-2 bedrooms. 

We do have a major hospital and two universities/colleges in the area. But I really don't see anybody would pay $4k+ a month from this clientele. Our LTR portfolio houses a number of these people and most them are in the $2-3k range. 

In general, even if your operation falls under the exemption of fair housing laws, I would recommend only write the bare minimum in a denial letter. If you have qualification requirements and there is one that the applicant doesn't meet, then just use that one. 

Personally, just based on the information you provided wouldn't be reasons to deny an applicant. Especially if you don't have other applications in the pool. 

I would call the employer and ask for an employer reference. The reference needs to show that the employee is a stable to the company. 

Relative is fine, if she's paying rent to the relative, I would ask for a bank statement showing the rent payment going out of the applicant's account each month during their tenancy. If the rent payment is showing on the 1st or before, that's an indication of a responsible behavior. 

If it's a couple from two different rentals, bank statements from each of them will show their payment behavior. You can ask them to redact as much as necessary, just show the rent payment line item and that's the only thing you care about. 

Then take a look at the combined past rent in relationship to your current rent? If they are similar, I would say they will be fine. If there is a big jump, then I would ask for additional security, either 50% more in security or pay last two month rent as an example. 

Awesome insight on MTR. We have a large LTR portfolio and now start to grow our STR portfolio. We've tried to list one of the STR on furnishfinder just to see if there's any luck with MTR and so far nothing. Probably we are asking for too much.

One quick question, how do you setup utilities for MTR? Do you let guest take over as LTR or you cover utilities as a STR? One thing that doesn't work out for us if we have to cover utilities, to stay in a competitive MTR price range, we are pretty much breaking even with LTR.

Example: We just built a 3/2 new construction, LTR comp is $2500 a month (vacant) $2800 a month fully furnished. Right now our STR is grossing $5000+ a month that includes cleaning fees because we do our own cleaning. If utilities (electric + water + internet) are $200-250 a month. Yard maintenance is $100 a month. With all the new furniture and turnover cleanings, we figured MTR needs to be at $4000 a month, including utilities for it to be worthwhile to us. But the comps from furnishfinder is showing $2800-3100 for this place. I think we would take a $3500 a month not including utilities. What are your thoughts on this scenario? I'd appreciate anyone's feedback and insight.

I would recommend be more hands on in the beginning, even you have automation in place, I would check on it during every turnover just make sure it's working properly. To find out whether your cleaner gets a cancellation message, when you get a cancellation, you could ask your cleaner did they get a message about the cancellation. If there is a trial period, test it out yourself. Assign yourself as a cleaner, book a stay and then cancel it and see if you get the message. 

STR is a hospitality business, very different than an investment. If you want your business to be successful and competitive, as a business owner, you need to be on top of everything. I wouldn't be very trust of any automation no matter how good they are. You still need to check on them at the minimum everyday or otherwise you will have lots of surprises and bad experiences waiting to happen.