All Forum Posts by: Lori Williams

Post a 3-day notice for eviction. Get into court explain the court of this person is MIA and hasn't paid rent and all their stuff is still in the rental. The court should send the sheriff out to remove their stuff pretty quickly

Does your lease have a clause in it that talks specifically about extended absences? Because it should. If it does you might be able to fall back on that as well. But you should definitely file for an eviction

I allow dogs and cats, and might allow something else, depending on what it is. And I allow it because I'm an animal person. I have a dog and I have cats and I have a raccoon, perfectly legal and permitted in my state because it is captive bred. 

I charge $500 to $600 per pet as a pet deposit.

I charge $25 to $50 per pet rent

All pets must be spayed or neutered and be up to date on their shots and I require this proof before they ever move in because I got burned this last time I didn't get the proof beforehand

I require them to have a $20,000 insurance policy against any damage the pet does to the property. That's a new one, caused by this last family that was a pet nightmare. I don't know where they can get such a policy, I don't know if rental policies allow for it or if you have to get an umbrella liability policy, but I want to know if the house is jacked up that I'm going to be able to fix it.

I'm tired of the people scamming to get out of pet deposits by having the fake emotional support animal papers that they can get online after a paying for a one hour consultation with an internet doctor. I had a couple who made over $150,000 between them apply for my $1,300 rental and they led their inquiry with "we have three emotional support animals with certificates." Fortunately my house is not large enough for three large emotional support animals.

Cash for keys is the equivalent of paying a ransom to a terrorist. I would never do that.

I would absolutely evict and let the courts know they threatened to destroy the property. I would absolutely give them as much notice as I had to and no more and enter that property every single day to do some sort of maintenance because I'm sure it's not great inside, and I'd call the police if they did any damage or threatened me.

Unless you live in a state that holds landlords hostage, allowing a squatter to stay is just rewarding really bad behavior and only encourages more of it from other people.

Look at it this way, you're probably going to be rehabbing anyway right? So you just have to do a little more rehab, but get them out. Find out how much notice you have to give to enter, have her give that notice and then you can see the property without the tenants permission. You need to take this bull by the horns. 

If you do decide to go the more passive route of cash for keys, they get no cash until you get the keys. If you give them half the cash there's no guarantee they're going to move especially when they have that kind of attitude. So here's two months rent, you get it the day you move out and the keys are in my hand. Meanwhile start the eviction process and if you get the eviction before you get the keys then he doesn't get the cash.

The 1% rule should be a starting point - where you can look at the numbers quickly and say it doesn't meet that minimum

if I used the 1% rule, I would be renting my properties for a lot less than I rent them for. Same thing if I use the 50% rule.

I use the "how much do I deserve to earn based on how much work an investment I've done" rule, accompanied by the "this is 100% better than anything else being rented in this market, so it should cost 100% more than anything else being rented in this market" and for now I basically follow these rules pretty closely

I've paid between 23k and 56k for a property. Including rehab, I have paid 73k to $136k for the property. And my net profits after paying all expenses range from 850.00- 1400+/mo. It's so in truth, my profits are at least 1% and are greater than 50%.

but you have to take each property individually. Figure out what your mortgage is going to be, your taxes, your insurance, how much you going to escrow for repairs and maintenance, calculate in a legitimate vacancy rate, property Management if you need that, and any other expenses.

you should at least be getting a 10% return after every single thing I mentioned above is paid.

I would think the only justification for purchasing a property for that much that brings in substantially less than 1% would be if the property were expected to appreciate in the 30 to 50% range to be honest. For investment that large I would think you should at least be putting $1,500 a month in your pocket after all expenses are paid, property management and repair and maintenance savings.

just my opinion. Your mileage may vary :)

I have heard that C neighborhoods cash flow the best. And I heard not to over rehab for the neighborhood. I first heard that after I started doing B+ properties on a C- street. And I have found the right C street w B properties can cash flow much better than C.

so it all depends on where your street is, what's going on around it, how desirable the neighborhood is, etc. As well as how much you have in the property purchase and rehab, vs what market rents are for similar properties. 

A 250k house where I live would not rent for the 3k/ mo it should rent for to make as much as I do on a 73k property 5 min down the road that rents for 1350.00 and has way lower taxes.  But I'm sure that would not be nessarily be the case everywhere.

The last property I bought was inherited tenants. Not fun. I gave them a 30 day notice and said they could stay if they paid increased rent. Of course, they didn't want the increase (it was substantial bc they were paying 350.00/mo which is absolutely unheard of). Now I'm evicting. One of them wants to stay and I don't want her to.

That was my first experience with inherited tenants. If I had it to do over again, I would probably just give them the 30 day notice and be done with it, without an option to pay higher rent.

In your case, you can just tell them to leave and evict after the 30 days and a 3 day (if Cali is like OH). Or tell them you won't do another lease, and on the 2nd day of any month that they haven't paid by the 1st of the month, you're giving them a 3 day notice and will not accept rent at that point. Maybe they'll pay on time if they really want to stay. 

Of course, check your laws in case they are different than my frame of reference :) Good luck!

I'm not an expert, I'm just guessing...

Since your father's property is an investment property, he technically needs to sell it and then do a 1031.

If your father's property needs 8-10k in work, that makes it about the same assessment value as Jane's.

So whether he sells the property for 10.00 or 100k and in turn buy's Jane's property for 10.00 or 100k, you would really have an even steven swap. Of course, your father shouldn't get any tax benefit from selling it way below market even if on paper. Maybe it's best to make the swaps for teh tax assessment value? (this is where an expert needs to clarify things)

BUT you have title work. So I would get with a title company you trust and find out from them what they are going to charge on an even swap when they get to do 2 properties, and your dad and Jane should split that cost.

Be careful when looking for a partner. There are unfortunately a lot of scammers and that are targeting real estate Investors.

You really need to be diligent if you are looking on the internet. You need to talk to them, you need to have a face-to-face conversation with them with something like a video chat on Facebook, you need to see the driver's license, and you need to know the addresses of the last three properties they bought, and then of course you would look them up on the county site to see if the name on a deed matches the name of the person talking to you. You never, ever give them access to your bank account, you never give them any money, any work through a real estate attorney with an ironclad contract. The lender or partner gets put on the deed and on the insurance until they are paid off (by the way you really don't pay a partner interest or pay them off, a partner is basically your business partner and who shares the risk and the reward)

If you want to send me a message and give me a little more information maybe I can help direct you to something that would be of help to you.

And please forgive the typos and seemingly bad grammar. I'm doing voice to text and my phone is hard of hearing :)