All Forum Posts by: Nicholas Crum

There is a clause that you can have in the contract, usually gives 10-15 days to have an inspection done at your cost. USE IT. Especially if you don't have the experience spotting the big ticket issues. The contract states you can back out of the deal for any reason during those 10-15 days.

People are afraid to talk about what they want to do with their lives. I have a very close friend that just happened to tell his former boss that he wants to flip homes for a living. His boss later cut him a check for $115k just because my friend told his story. It's amazing who is listening when you don't even know it.

I am in Florida and the area I am in is averaging 8% rent increases. If you are over 90% occupied you should raise. Usually 3-5% people will live with and not put up a fight. I am a property manager for 180 unit multi-family community. The other thought is if you don't want to raise their rent you can increase your rentable items. Example, if they have a pet, charge $10 a month for them to have the pet in the apartment.

Hope this helps.

Are you using agents for each investment deal? If so, depending on how large the deal you could save a bit of money. But that also means you are now in charge of marketing the properties, showings and doing all the paperwork that a normal realtor has to do. If your time is worth more than doing paperwork, I wouldn't become an agent.

Hi Sam,

If you are looking to just cash out quickly, your best option may be just to hire a realtor and pay the realtor commissions. I am unsure of the state laws but sometimes you can have the buyer pay the closing and commissions as well. That may be a viable option for you.

I hope this helped!

This is a great point. If you are going to borrow money as a down payment for an investment property, it can not be a "gift" from someone. However, if you open a business account, the initial amount you put in the account just has to sit for 60 days to be able to use for an investment property. I ran into a situation like this and this is what the bank told me I was able to do.

As a portfolio if you ever need to go to the banks, they use 95% as the standard for vacancies. In other words, they will only loan up to what the property is worth if 95% of the units are filled. Some, if not most, investors do the same.

Hope this helps.

Right now for buy and hold multi-family units the average return offered to investors is 10-15% yearly. If the properties you are looking out do not fit that budget then I would advise looking for new ones. You definitely need to have this 10-15% accounted for when you are doing your analysis. There is no guarantees for investors but they want to make sure it's something they can take over if things go south and still break even.

I don't have a lot of posts here but I have managed $75m worth of multi-family apartment homes in the last 5 years. This is what the company I work for offers investors.

I hope this helps!

This particular house has a renter already in the home. I actually gained more information from the renter than anything. If the home doesn't have a renter you have nothing to lose by making a simple phone call explaining how you would like to help take the house off their hands. You would be surprised the information they give.

I had a cash value I was willing to offer for the home but like I said before this is a business and I am here to make profit. So I offered half the asking price. They obviously weren't too thrilled but then gave me the information that they need to make $80k on the home. This told me that the home was paid for and that was the minimum they would take. So I made my offer based on that and they happily accepted. I now have a home with a renter and a very nice equity line.

Just my thoughts. I am a property manager for a large apartment complex. In order to use a guarantor, the guarantor needs to make double the normal required income. As long as their credit and background check is satisfactory there should be no issues. I would also require an extra security deposit. I am unfamiliar with the state laws you are in, but you need to treat every applicant the same.

Hope this helped!