All Forum Posts by: Mark Mueller

Be careful when used Furnished Finder.  They default the automatic renewal to Yes.  And they do NOT offer cancellation refunds.  So if you stop listing with them and do not turn that off, you'll get billed another year and they won't refund you.

Use that for what you will, but I feel it's a reflection on their business ethics.  If you proceed, do so with caution.

A friend of mine suggested I watch this.  Glad he did.  It was very insightful, but one major aspect missing in my opinion.  In poker, you have limited choices.  Bet or fold.  Checking is an option, but doesn't usually get you far and eventually you have to make the bet or fold decision.  The only other decision is how much to bet.  And, in most cases, you have probability to assist.  Poker is SUPER easy when you are staring at the nuts hand.  You just hope and pray others have good stuff at the same time so you can rake in more.  I've yet to find that in RE.  With real estate, you can choose to do a flip, brrrr, long term, host (airbnb), residential, multi unit, or commercial to name a few.  RE can be like 50 poker decisions all at once.  Some of them with very little data to go on.  I don't know that this helps with direction and I think there was a gap in looking at opportunity costs when making decisions.  Those are the things that stump me quite often.   For example, if you have one path with great data and one without much data, how do you choose?  In her examples, I only caught a single decision you face without good data to analyze, and then you look at the other aspects.  If this was easy, more people would be doing it :)  Maybe her included.  Nonetheless a good podcast to help with the types of decisions she is referring to.  Like, if your decision is to get into RE or not, okay.  But if you want to evaluate RE against stocks, collector cars, coins, etc. or set up an antique booth at the local mall, start a website, or maybe buy another type of business, your decisions would be much more analytical.  Also, I kept hearing @Brandon Turner in the background going "always know the numbers!".  LOL!

I just received my first ESA information from a tenant.  She was already in a home.

She sent information and Dr. letter, etc. and she is not a poor tenant and no reason for me to be too concerned.

However, this law totally burns my __________.

I have other tenants with pets and I charge a security deposit and extra rent.  But I can't for an ESA tenant?

I'm not "charging extra", I'm only charging what anyone else with a pet would pay.  But because it's in addition to the rent, it's disallowed.

I don't have to reduce my rent if the actual TENANT is disabled, but I essentially have to reduce my rent if the tenant has a dog.

Reverse discrimination always irritates me.

 Good luck...most of them will advise against it most likely...they don't get commission on rental property you buy.  Unfortunately way too many of them push products that pay them the highest percentage of commission.  I've had to move on from more than one for this reason.

Certainly possible.  The lender will want to make sure maintain enough equity in what you already own.  Usually 80% needs to be maintained at a max, and often it's 75% in our area.  There may be places that go more, but I would not know of any, nor would I comment in reply that is a good idea.

The pros are you can buy more rentals, leading to more cash flow.  The con is more debt.  Dave Ramsey would advise not to do this :)  If you have enough equity, another pro would be the ability to pay cash on a new purchase, which gives you leverage on negotiation, quicker closing, etc.

That decision should be only after some reflection on what you business model/plan is.  If you intend to sell a rental soon, borrowing more money on that unit could cause a negative cash situation at a sale.  If you intend to keep long term, and build your portfolio, it could be a good growth plan.  Also, keep in mind what you expect real estate prices to do in your area.  If they are appreciating, that's good, but if you expect depreciation, then you could wind up with an unfavorable equity position.

If you did do it, putting any profits from the new rental acquisition and any others you can into paying off that Heloc early would only help you in the long term.  Personally, I would probably analyze my profit on the new rental and make sure I can pay off the Heloc from those profits in a reasonable payback period (along with the other typical analysis you would do).  If your payback is too long, you may want to look at another property, consider other financing options, or be patient by waiting and saving.

 Everyone has the right to an opinion, I was just expressing mine.  In my experience, I found that neglect and non payment of rent often go hand in hand.  So you're essentially working to evict them anyway.  I also found that, if I care too much, I need to get out of this business.  It will drive me crazy.  Everyone is different and each person has to run their business in their own way, and what suits them and makes each one of us successful.  You have your ways, and that doesn't mean that anyone that doesn't do it your way is wrong or should be ashamed of how they run their business.

I had a duplex years ago, had a company renting both units for disabled tenants.  They paid rent on time every month from a corp account, and had their own maintenance crew.  I inspected interiors one time.  They replaced things with their maintenance crew...carpet completely black with stains, and it was carpet they replaced once before and not what was there when they moved in 6 months prior.  One of the tenants put a fist through a door and they replaced it.  Stained wood plain doors throughout, and they put a white panel door on.  I was just thinking of all the money I'd have to re-fix what they did not do right.  That bugged me.  They paid great, no issues otherwise, other than I was losing sleep over what I'd have to fix. 

Since then, I don't check inside any of mine.  I'll drive by and view the outside occasionally, but otherwise, I'll not lose sleep over it and fix it when they are gone.  I take videos of before and after, so if it becomes that bad, I'll pursue legal action.  Many times it will cost more for me to evict them than to let them run the lease out.  However, I do my best to screen tenants prior to move in.  I do more than most up front to try and avoid being in that situation.  It's not perfect, but I consider at what point I"m really going to try and get them out, vs the sleep I lose over it.  Attorney fees, etc. or repair costs to fix.  It's a tough decision.

If you're going to do it, in my opp, makes sense, again in my opp, to either do it like others suggest above and go in and do smoke detector batteries, hvac filters, etc. each 3 months and let them know up front.  That will hopefully keep them honest.  Or don't go in at all.  I wouldn't go in so seldom that it's just going to cause you to see things you will lose sleep over and fret on how to evict them.

Personally, I won't go in in the first 12 months, but when my lease goes to month to month, then I can get them out with more urgency if there is an issue.  That is when I'm more apt to inspect, but after 12 months, you usually know if you have someone caring for the house or not.

The notes in QB about accepting ACH payments are it has to be 2014 or later.  FYI.  So, you can update desktop every 3 years and do $.50 ACH or just go with erentpayment for $3 each.  If you have 3 rentals that take ACH, you'll pay for the desktop upgrade in that savings alone.

I also own QB 2011 Desktop, and it would work fine if you still wanted to use it and do your books.  If you don't take ACH, you can spread out the expense over time.

I used QBOE for a number of years for another business.  I liked it because I could use a computer at my office, one at home, my cell phone, etc.  It was super convenient.  I also didn't have to install on other machines for an employee, etc.  I used QB for credit card processing and customers sending payments of invoices.  it worked really well.  I did not use it for payroll.  QB is expensive and cumbersome for payroll.

HOWEVER, I sold that business and now I just have the rentals.  It did not make sense for me to have it for this purpose.  I won't have employees that need to access billing/invoicing, etc.  You can still send invoices and accept ACH payments with the Desktop.

The biggest issue I had is that I transferred my online data (QB keeps this online and you have to jump through hoops to get it.  As long as you pay the monthly fee, it's great, but it took me about 8 hours to figure out how to get my data).  After spending way more time than anyone should have, I found the data did not transfer completely and correctly.  With the amount of data, there is no way I would find where it was missing information, so I'm stuck paying $20 until I can finish up entries and print copies I cling to with a death grip.

Not that I'd never use online again, but I wouldn't for rentals unless you had an office staff of more than 1 person beside you as the owner.  I'm using Desktop for rentals going forward as it's a much less complex type of business.