All Forum Posts by: Mason Hickman

@Adam Tafel

In your strategy, are you allowing guests for longer than a month? If so, are you having them sign a formal lease?

@Brad Waterstraat

Also, be careful if items aren't legally permitted (like a stove). Heaven forbid there was a fire; you would have a tough time battling insurance. 

@Patrick Flanagan

You'll like podcast number 388 from last week; all about storage facilities.

@Brad Waterstraat

I went pretty far down this path on a house my wife and I wanted to buy. Long story short: there was an illegal apartment in the top of an old single-family house. After long discussions with the town building inspector he basically said that the kitchen isn't the problem it's the use of the building. He said you can have six kitchens if you want to in a single family house but you can't start renting them as separate units because it violates the zoning.  

@Darren Wendroff

You can buy a list through someone like listsource or you can have an agent pull mailing information from the MLS system (at least that's possible using the MLS in my area).

@Thomas Baylor

I haven't done this with a larger family but I have seen duplexes with 4BR on one side up in my area. They definitely don't come across as often as the smaller units but they are out there. 

@Kelsey Folger

Awnings always scream "outdated" in my personal opinion, so I would get rid of those. Putting up a small fence barrier area to hide all the trashcans would go a long way, too. Shutters would add some contrast on the back portion of the house. 

I used Moxiworks that was provided by my brokerage and it was clunky and didn't have features I would have expected. I switched to Top Producer and have had good experiences. TP has launched a beta of an updated user-friendly interface that has made things pretty easy to navigate, too. Still a few glitches but all-in-all, I'm happy. 

@Keyla Ragland

If there are properties on the same street that are ranging $900K from one another, there is something that is setting them apart from one another. It doesn't sound like it is an apples to apples comparison. I'd start by evaluating the actual houses and features of each. Make sure you're excluding distressed sales; distressed sales should not be used because the buyer pool is much lower and usually does not entice the retail buyers that same way a turnkey property does. Additionally, there are stressors pushing the price down from external sources. Make sure all the transactions are recent within the last 6 months. Are there different lot sizes, finishes, property style? A good example in my local area is that split ranches don't sell nearly as well as capes. You can have a 3/2 cape and a 3/2 split ranch with the exact same square footage in the same neighborhood with 100s of thousands of difference in price. 

@Jen Jaynes 

So you're trying to wholesale it? If so, try to contact the leader of a local REIA and see if they can connect you to potential buyers. Also, post the deal in the marketplace here on BP.