All Forum Posts by: Michael Hayworth

One Hour Air is a franchise. They have a marketing budget, franchise fees, and generally higher expenses. You want an independent, investor friendly HVAC tech. 

"Investor friendly" generally means a company that specializes in working for construction companies, remodelers, investors and such. They typically have little overhead, don't do much marketing, show up in old pickups instead of late-model vans, and the techs may have limited English. That stuff is important to homeowners paying retail, but a smart investor will only care if the work is done well.

General rule for AC is 1 ton per 500sf of living space. So you need a basic 2-ton system. I can get those installed for under $3K in my area using my regular HVAC tech. His English is a little rough - he mainly speaks redneck - but his prices are good and quality of work is excellent. Ask other investors in your local market for recommendations to someone like that.

Many of us have good memories of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It motivated a lot of us, because it contains a lot of truth. I gained a lot from the book.

But publishing one good book doesn't make you an angel. There have been lots of questions raised about Kiyosaki's business practices over the years, and whether he's really made any significant money from anything other than being a success guru. 

At the end of the day, the goal of all success gurus is to transfer money from your wallet to theirs. If any of them really had a guaranteed system the way they say, they'd be getting huge offers from hedge funds, not trying to convince small investors to increase their credit card limit to spend increasingly large amounts of money on seminars where they feed out information one drop at a time.

This is a business. Treat it like it.

Tenants lie. Tenants will involve you in their drama if you let them. Tenants will come up with sob stories if you buy 'em and let late rent slide. Be courteous, but professional. Focus on the business side of things.

Don't chase money. Get your tenants on autodraft payments. We use eRentPayment.com, but there are several good systems out there. Your time is too valuable to spend it chasing down tenants for payments.

Make it clear who (tenant) is responsible for plumbing blockages, which is the most common service call a landlord gets. Based on some advice I saw here on BP, we're changing our policy. We used to send our plumber out, but tell tenants "If it's a tenant caused blockage, you'll be responsible for it." But that left us chasing money, which I just said we don't like to do. Now we're going to have a page in the lease saying blockages are assumed to be tenant caused, but if they bring us evidence that it's a broken drain pipe or something like that, we'll reimburse them for their expenses.

Good luck.

Originally posted by @Derek Robinson:

You guys are making me feel bad now!

..... 

You are being totally reasonable. I truly don't understand some of the responses to the contrary.

The specifics here are determined by the contract, and by the laws of your state. If you truly cannot get your EM back without seller signoff or without seller being able to cloud to title, then that may change your calculus. If you can, you should stick to your guns.

In Texas, it's typical for the financing contingency to be good for 15-21 days. I give every buyer the same spiel: "There are a lot of bad lenders out there. Be sure you've chosen a good one. I want you to be aware that I have multiple offers on this property. I'm accepting your offer, but if you cannot close on time, I'll give you one, 1-week extension. After that, I'll cancel the contract and keep the EM." 

That tends to clarify things for buyers and lenders who want to make excuses, "Oh, TRID means we can't close a loan in 30 days anymore." "Oh, the appraisal took a long time." (Yeah, because you didn't order it until a week before closing.) "Oh.......this, that, some other thing...." 

And if we still end up not closing on time, I do exactly what I said. Every single time. And if a title company says they can't release it, they get a demand letter from my attorney. Every single time. And they eventually release it. Every single time. Just happened again 3 months ago. Even if I had to fight it in court, I would spend the money because it's worth establishing precedent. "No, you think you're going to put pressure on me. But I don't really need the money anytime soon - it's the principle of the thing - and my policy is that I'll fight this in court, every single time." That clarifies things for a lot of attorneys.

Figure out what the laws are in NC, but I encourage you to not be embarrassed that you don't want to be strung along again to potentially have the deal fail to close again, without knowing you'll be compensated.

Being a buyer's agent is a tough job. (That's why most RE agents want to get listings.) You have to take buyers around to multiple properties - sometimes 30 or 40 before they want to put in an offer. Then you're trying to get offers accepted in a tight market. Sometimes it takes a ton of offers before you get one accepted...and you still haven't gotten through inspections yet.

A good BA only wants to show you properties that are right for you. He/she will advise you that you'll need to be able to provide Proof of Funds with an offer, particularly in a tight market. So yeah, it's important that they know you'll be paying cash. It's also important that you be honest with them and provide documentation of how much cash you have to work with.

Don't chase money. Best advice ever. 90% of my tenants are on autodraft, and collecting rent isn't anything like the hassle I see many people talk about. We just set that as part of our tenant evaluation criteria and tell tenants that's how it works.

That's really general. We don't know how good a landlord you are now. Probably the most important thing I learned is to train my tenants right. It's much like parenting. If you let them get away with lots of little stuff early on, you're setting a pattern. Then they take more advantage, you get frustrated, and things are always tense. Set clear boundaries early. Don't have too many rules, but enforce the ones you have. Keeps the relationship clear on both sides. Take care of real service requests promptly. Decline service requests that should be tenant responsibility. Don't chase money. My tenants are 90% on autopay. I don't waste energy chasing checks, they don't have to worry about forgetting. Again, that removes a big source of tension. This is a business. Treat it like one. Be polite, be professional, but enforce clear rules. Everyone is happier.

So what you're saying is you made a decision to sign a contract on a house you hadn't seen. The contract calls for you to get the benefit of termination for X days in exchange for a small fee. Now you decided you made a bad decision, and want the advantage of the termination clause without holding up your end of the contract? Classy.

Depends on my mood.

• Harley Ultra Limited
• Yamaha Royal Star
• Yamaha R6

I enjoy 'em, I arrive happy, and I work too damn hard to let traffic make me miserable. Plus, my main job is as a remodeler, and middle-aged suburban women get a little wet when a tattooed guy with tools shows up on a bike to talk about renovating the kitchen. "Sign here, ma'am, and we'll get you on the calendar."

There's a beat-up old truck out back I drive when it's pouring rain. My gf wishes I'd trade it for a newer one, but I'd rather spend the money on another house.

Originally posted by @Cody L.:

Lol. Your manager is awesome. I want to hire her.

My ops person wanted to turn on a connivence fee for online payments. I said "no" but added a fee for tree based 1800s style payments.

I hate non online pay. I'd like to charge people at least $10 for making my manager deal with tree pieces

It's hard for me to believe that @John Anderson manages many properties. Physical checks suck, and money orders or cash are even worse. A physical check requires my bookkeeper to take 3 minutes out of her day to run the deposit through our Chase check scanner. But money order or cash require her to actually drive to the bank to make a deposit. Sure, that was common 10 years ago, but it's not 2007 anymore. But more importantly, those forms or payment depend on the tenant to remember to make his/her payment, and get it there while the office is open. We don't want that - we want payment to come out automatically every month.

We make it clear in our lease agreement that the stated rent amount is for auto-pay, which can be ACH thru our bank, or electronic payments thru eRentPayment.com. (BTW, eRent allows tenants the option of reporting the credit bureaus, which has helped several good tenants rebuild their credit after divorce or other bad life circumstance.) If they want to do a check, cash or money order, it's an additional $25/mo. 

The other nice thing this allows us to do is break up payments if necessary. I have one tenant who's a very sweet lady who has trouble managing her money. She's a teacher who gets paid twice a month, so we broke up her rent into two monthly payments. The school district pays her via direct deposit on the 1st and 15th, and we take rent right out of the account immediately on those days.