All Forum Posts by: Roy Gutierrez

Interesting read:

"The Detroit City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to update its rental regulations, including enacting rules that stop landlords from collecting rent if they haven’t passed city inspections"

Check the story out:

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroi...

Hi guys,

I appreciate the advice, I will definitely think about the pro service @Jody Schnurrenberger, thank you for the suggestion. I just started going to the investor meetings @Cody Evans, definitely a great way to start building relationships. 

@Bora Yalcin, very interesting, when you say HELOC against all of them, you mean try to HELOC each individual house or there's some HELOC that you can combine the houses and get one big HELOC? Thank you for the contacts! I'll provide some entertaining reading of how I got started: I lost my house in the recession in FL, I was in michigan thinking I would rent for the rest of my life and I was fine with that, mom "pressured" me to use her $50K loan (part of her retirement) to buy a house (no intentions to invest, just a house to live in) initially I didn't want to risk her money but after some thought I accepted her offer in 2012, after months of many losing bids of foreclosures I finally won not 1 but 2 at the same time, so my realtor brother said not to let go the other one so he lent me $20K, after the rehabbing, contractors, being scammed sometimes and feeling like the life was sucked out of me (and by miracle didn't get fired from my job) I finished both so I had to put one for rent, swore never to do this again but 2 years later was looking thru zillow and homepath and the adrenaline juices started flowing again, took out a home equity loan and bought 2 more, repeat same pattern, life sucked out of me, again I don't know how I didn't get fired, but afterwards I was just tired and not disillusioned with real estate like the first time; and then bought the last one where I live 2 years ago, sorry to make it long lol.

Thank you @Jessie Niu, I'm trying to see which of the methods you mentioned will take me the furthest.

Hello everyone,

Technically I'm not starting my career in real estate, I have 4 rentals, I was pretty much an accidental landlord, that started out with 2 rentals and now I'm up to 4, I credit this to the recession prices, I got lucky, I wasn't savvy, just a hard worker. I quit my job last year and finishing getting organized with the vacation rental side of my business and by November will be ready to tackle this new phase in my real estate career full steam ahead and grow my business.

This is my current situation, 4 rentals, plus my own home:

Home 1 - Vacation Rental - worth about $160K - Owe 42K (conventional 4.25)

Home 2 - Vacation Rental - worth about $185K - Owe  $50K (conventional 4.25)

Home 3 - Long Term Rental - worth about $165K - House free and clear

Home 4 - Long Term Rental - worth about $95K - House paid off but have lien from SBA Owe $30K

Home 5 - Primary Home - worth about $200K - Owe $120K (FHA, 3.75 BUT also pay PMI so in reality it's 4. something)

All my houses are doing really well, I tried to get rid of the cheapest one to finance buying a more high-end home but no bites so just kept it as a rental which is fine by me.

My goal is to acquire more properties in my area (suburbs north of Detroit or something close to downtown Detroit) or in South Florida (used to live there and have family there), my options would be:

- Property to flip (have a friend contractor that has done work for flippers so I would partner with him)

- Long term rental

- Vacation rental

My first hurdle would be financing, I was trying to hold on to my high stress job until I acquired at least 1-2 more properties but it was my health or 1-2 more properties so I chose my health. So now I'm self employed, all the houses are under my name, which is something else that I want to take a look into (maybe create an LLC(s))

My plan is start listening to as many podcasts as possible, start contacting banks to see what type of financing I can qualify for and take it from there. What would you experienced investors do in my situation? Any particular way you would use the houses to help finance other properties? 

Thank you very much in advance for the advice!

Hi @Sara K., yes I did, used Vets + Best Flea and Tick yard, along with fogging the garage and crawl space. I have 2 more treatments in the yard just in case. Found out that a neighbor's dog has fleas as well but at least on my property I have treated the hell out of it.

I don't blame her @Shiloh Lundahl, having kids in the picture adds a different dynamic (although some families seem to be doing it successfully but I think I would be in your wife's camp even though it's a separate structure). 

Thanks for all the help guys, @Ray Harrell, yes, unfortunately finding someone to come vacuum everyday was a challenge and this was serious enough that I thought that no one could vacuum better than me since it was my butt on the line so I did it, luckily now it seems the infestation is gone, I probably stink of pesticide to all my friends and might be growing an ear on the back of my head in the future from the exposure but at least the house is flea free but I will continue to apply treatments and vacuum until at least the end of the month (to be triple sure!).

I explained to the renter the situation and showed him the amount I had spent so far in materials and my labor and lost time and he was sensible enough and agreed with me, it helped that I let him stay in the house with his belongings in the garage for a month rent free while he looked for another place.

Thank you for the response @Marcia Maynard, I love pets (including birds) I just don't own them because they require a lot of attention. I think I will add a pet fee per month and take it from there, thank you for the suggestion.

My main concern was what type of monetary loss does having a bird can cause, I learned the hard way a cat can cause me 3k+ in losses (mostly infestation related), cleaning 2 times at end of lease because it was very dirty or fixing a couple of broken things is not a deal breaker, those just come out of the deposit.  

A small observation, I see a lot of comments from investors that make a lot of extra money allowing pets into their rentals in multiple properties and I'm quite surprised that I don't hear to much about infestations (especially fleas), did I get very unlucky with my first renter with pets? (actually I think I did allow my first ever guest to have a pet midway....humm)  or is this type of stuff not really mentioned to much for X reason? I guess what landlord wants to be associated with a house that has a flea infestation, right? lol

Congratulations @Shiloh Lundahl, have you considered making it an airbnb? Depends on how nice you make the guest house (and it looks real nice!) it the gains could be SIGNIFICANT compared to regular monthly rents, if one of you has the time to book/vet people and cleaning then you're good to go, if you put the effort once you start getting the good reviews, your demand increases, you're able to increase prices and you're golden!

thanks @Levi T., that's a great option to think about. 

@Tom S. thank you for the feedback, this renter seems extremely sharp and clean but "seems" is the key word, seems like your renters were not very clean, how much extra cleaning did you have to do because of this? I'm guessing that the bird needs to get out of it's cage a bit to keep it's sanity, is this correct?

@Paul Bowers it's a single family, before I wouldn't have hesitated to allow it but I just had a renter leave me with a flea infestation because they didn't take care of 2 cats, took me about a month and a half to finally get rid of that, so now I don't allow pets but I'm not foreseeing a budgie doing anything near what the cats (or better said the owners of the cats) did but I don't know.

@Levi T. I wanted to know the kind of damage the birds can potentially do in order to have an idea if to totally say no to the renter or do a pet rent. Like the issue with the cats, it cost me about 3 grand, so I guess some type of infestation would be my main concern; cleaning or repairing some small damage is no big deal, out of their deposit. The renters insurance sounds like a great idea, I'm going to look into that. Do you require renter's insurance even if they don't have pets? Just curious, seeing that you allow pets did you ever have a pest infestation? I'm 0 for 1, first time I allow a pet and got burned.

Thank you.