All Forum Posts by: Kelly Byrd

I posted a feature request for more granular notification settings here:
https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/25/topics/450361-small-change-request-for-notification-settings

Damn! I'll miss this. I'm out of state this weekend driving the neighborhoods to get a feel for things where I want to buy. Hope to be at the next one.

I'm not sure how the powers that be prefer to get feature requests, so I thought I would start here. Hopefully, this is a small change.

Over in Notification Settings, I would like to be able to select a different frequency for "a topic I monitor" vs "a forum I monitor is updated. 

Here is why I want this:

I want to be notified immediately of any topics that I started or posted to, without requiring the reply to have an @mention of my name. This keeps the conversation on a specific topic going while folks are still online.

For forums I monitor, I want only daily frequency. Right now, I'm getting "instant" emails for all new posts in the "Tax Liens, Notes..." forum and I don't really want that. I do want to stay connected to many forums, but not with instant updates. BUT, I don't want to miss a reply to topic I started, so I keep this setting at "Instantly"

Please consider making "forum is updated" a separate setting from "topic is updated".

P.S What I really want is to have a separate frequency for every topic or forum I monitor. Many online forum software packages let users manage this with a "subscriptions" interface similar to the "Followed Topics" and "Followed Forums" UI you have now. I subscribe to a forum or a topic, I have a default notification for all new subscriptions, and I can always go back and change notification frequencies for a specific subscription. But, that may be more complex of a UI than BiggerPockets wants to present.

Thanks for the replies @Jeff Greenberg and @Thomas S.  

Regarding "placing the first applicant with a pulse" I've been assuming that I'll be able to choose the tenant, right? That is, the PM will advertise, run the various checks for credit, evictions, criminal, ability to pay, etc but ultimately they'll recommend a few applicants, I'll look at the documentation and pick one? 

I'm new to REI and looking at my first small multi-family properties. I'm going to start interviewing property managers soon so I've been reading the various BP blog posts and guides on questions to ask, things to look out for, etc. I think I'm relatively comfortable with the standard costs and arrangements, but one thought keeps popping up over and over. How do I incentivize my property manager to reduce tenant turnover, shorten turnaround times, and basically reduce overall vacancy rates?

I'm not expecting a hands off approach, I expect to have to manage the PM and I looki forward to finding one I click with when interviewing them. But, I'm a big fan of figuring out incentives up front, rather than fighting conflicting goals down the road. I want to try and set things up so it is in the PM's own interest to have tenants happy to re-up a lease, or to turn a newly vacant unit over in days instead of weeks. 

So, not having to pay the PM when a unit is vacant seems seems like a start, but I worry that things like a new tenant placement fee or a new lease fee works against that.  To be clear, I'm not trying to pay the PM less. I believe the right PM is critical to my success and if I do well, he or she should do well. I'd pay more overall if I found a PM he worked to keep tenants happy they stay year after year and surprise me with speedy unit turn over. 

I'm hoping you all have come up with creative ways to align these things. 

When I was renting (mostly houses), one of the first things I did when moving in was re-key the locks, then provide the landlord with a copy of the key. I always asked first, and never had a landlord refuse.

It drove me nuts that I had no idea how many copies of the keys to my current front door were floating around in the world. The last time I did this, the landlord was ok but surprised. She said: "We've been using these keys for 10 years." 

Refinancing is getting a new loan on a property after purchase that pays off the existing loan. A common case is to pay off the existing loan and end up with some extra cash at the end of the refinance that you can use for other investments. But you could refinance just to get different loan terms too.

Some examples (The numbers I use are not be realistic, they just make the math easier)

• Lower interest rate / smaller payment: You bought a property 10 years ago that has a 30yr mortgage at 5.5%. Loan amount was $50K. You refinance the balance of that mortgage, now about $42K using new 30yr loan at current rates, say 4.75%. Because of the lower interest rate and you're financing less (because you paid down the loan over the last 10 years), your monthly payment is lower
• BRRR (Buy, renovate, rent, refinance, repeat): You by a property that needs work for $100K, put $20K down and a 80K loan. This is an 80% Loan-To-Value (LTV). You then put 30K in rehab costs, then get tenants in place. Let's say your property now appraises for 175K. At this point you have a $175K property and have used $50K of your own money ($20K for downpayment, $30K for rehab). You go to a bank and refinance based on the 175K value. This new loan requires an an 75% LTV, so based on the new 175K appraisal, the most you can borrow is ~$131K. So this $131K loan pays off the original 80K loan and then there is $51K left over. You now have all of your cash back in hand, plus a $175K property with rents coming in every month. You can used that $51K cash to do this all over again.
• Pay off hard money or private money: After you've have several mortgages, banks may not be willing to give you any more conventional residential mortgages. Some investors look to hard money or private money lenders. These are almost always shorter term and higher interest rate loans (6 month to a few years at anywhere from 6-15%) that people use to purchase a property and renovate. If you decide to hold the property and rent it out, you'll want to refinance to pay off the shorter term higher interest rate loan. The refinance still may not be as loan as a traditional mortgage, but it should be better than 1yr term at 10%. 
• Delayed financing: This really isn't "refinancing" but I think of it in the same ballbark. You use cash to buy a property so you can close quickly and possibly make your offer more attractive, then get mortgage after purchase. The idea is you can move faster than you could if you had to wait for a bank to close escrow (30 - 45days?) Being able to close faster may be more attractive to the seller and get you a better overall deal, assuming you can still do the inspections and due diligence you need to do to be comfortable.

Thanks to all that have replied. Doing some thinking last night with my partner-in-crime/wife, we landed at the "buy several properties 3-4 unit range while 30yr rates are cheap" advice that @Jeff Kehl just gave.  Glad Bigger Pockets is here!

Good point to bring up, but yea I've been since I'm new to this I expected a bank to look at my income regardless. 

Originally posted by @Terry Lao:

@Kelly Byrd

If you don't have to worry about debt ratios, total under 45%, then that means your income can fully support either 1-4, or 5-8. If you need the rental income to help qualify, then 1-4 is your best option. Also, in using rental income or 75% of lease agreements, then fannie mae wants you to have 2 years landlord experience, meaning 2 years of schedule E on federal tax returns.

Terry Lao

If all other things (like financing options) were equal, I'm attracted to 5-8 units. I like the vacancy mitigation, the income approach vs comp approach to valuing the properties, and what I hope are some economies of scale in the expenses.  My target area dictates that I'll likely end up in a something with 3-6 units for what I want to spend on this first property.

I'm new to RE Investing (I've been reading and podcast listening for months) so I was originally just targeting 2-8 without making a distinction between commercial or residential. I knew in the back of my head they were valued differently but to me, these all felt "sort of the same" so it wasn't until I started learning about commercial loans that I realized I had another problem to solve. That's real estate, a never ending set of puzzles to solve! Ok, I'll run some scenarios tomorrow and see if I think it's worth it for me.