All Forum Posts by: Mark Kelley

Take the risk free money.

@Dawn Brenengen Thanks for the advice. I also appreciate the dozens of your other posts I've read. Learning a lot.

@Gabe C. Thanks for the compliment. We're having a great time on our travels, though it's not all rosy. Plenty of tantrums and tough days.

I'm currently in Montana and will be spending the rest of the summer in the Pac NW. It's likely we're going to pull through San Francisco in September. Would it be cool to grab coffee while I'm in town?

Also, there could be fees on the renters side, depending on their bank card. I don't know which banks or what types of cards charge, but I know that when you try to pay for something with more money than you have in your Venmo account, you get a message indicating that there may be charges. 

@Ryan Fisher Just pulled up the thread searching Venmo to see if others use it. I've had nothing but good experiences collecting rent payment with Venmo for about 18 months now. 

Venmo has been especially useful for me since I am currently a nomad without an easy way to receive physical checks.

As far as the security the @Jeff Gates mentioned above, there is definitely risk. As some of my colleagues in security have said, there are two types of companies, those that have been breached and those that will be breached. For this reason, I drain my Venmo account each month to $0. I don't let money site in there.

Also, Venmo only allows transfers to your bank of $3,000 at a time, but you can make as many $3,000 transfers as you want in succession. It's not a hassle, but it makes me skeptical about using Venmo at a greater scale. 

@Gabe C. Thank you for the perspective and questions. Need to define a plan: facepalm. 

It looks like you're in bay area but active in Raleigh? Do you have a house still in Five Points?

@Melissa Nevich Ah, thanks for clearing that up. Good luck in the hunt. If you want some local knowledge, I'm happy to share my perspective on the cities and areas where I have properties.

@Andrew S. Sharp question! One of the reasons I joined BP is to start working through my concerns and uncertainly about whether or not to sell the two rentals in Five Points. 

As you likely know, the area is in high demand for buyers and renters, and 3/2 are highly desirable and increasingly difficult to find with the infill. Both are on low 30 yr fixed loans. I'm feel fortunate to have the properties and the cash flow.

However, the cash on cash return is low due to low LTV (around .35 and .55) based on current property value.

Based on my math, and keeping greed in check, it seems the best move is to sell and put the money into other property with higher CoC returns.

However, I have strong urge to keep the properties despite the low ConC return because the people that want to live there are great and I have few issues. In this case, perhaps the route is to refinance to pull money out or even tear them down in a few years, build a McMansion, and sell that. 

I'm clearly all over the map, which is why I decided to come out of the BP shadows and start figuring out the direction I want to head.

@Melissa N. In Five Points, Raleigh, the homes are 1940's bungalows, 3bd / 2 ba each. In Old Shandon, Columbia, I have a 2 bd / 1.5 ba townhouse. I'm curious, why are you quitting looking to buy in Raleigh?

 @Adam Schneider 

Thanks for the welcome. While I'm exploring our national parks, I'm just keeping the rentals up and running and cash flowing. 

In my judgement, it seems prudent that my next move is to cash out on the rentals I have in Five Points and another in Columbia, SC, and then reinvest cash in other cash flowing properties. Selling these homes will be the easy part, my goal for the rest of this year is to determine the harder part, which is in what niche and in what area in or around Raleigh I want to reinvest.