All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

We got an email today that our online rent collection service, WilliamPaid.com, is no longer going to be providing this service. WilliamPaid was free to landlords and was simple to use so this is unfortunate. Does anyone have a recommendation for another site that charges no fees or minimal fees?

Good luck, welcome back!

Joe Villeneuve - you are correct that the property as laid out in that scenario loses $16K, but the alternative is to lose $20K to $40K now. To me the picture is pretty clear.

Mike - this last post is an excellent one.  Don't forget to add option 4, which is sell now, and take a $20K-$40K loss. 

Mike - I agree with everything you said, but want to add a couple points:

1) you mention that all it takes is one bad tenant to wipe out income.  That is the case for any property, so if he exits this one and buys another, he likely has the same chance of this happening on either property so I don't think it should play into his decision (unless he doesn't plan on getting another property).

2) When you talk about investing that $3K in government bonds over the next 8 years with no headache...that isn't an option here.  His option is to write a $20K check now (or even $40K as you correctly pointed out), or wait it out with a realistic chance of never having to write a check. 

@Joe - As Sam showed the math earlier (which I haven't double checked), in 8 years he's paid down $27K of principal but perhaps only burned $20K in cash ($2500/year losses x 8).  At that point he's ahead, so why lock in a $20K payment now?  In addition, depending on his tax situation, he can use the annual losses, in addition to depreciation, to reduce the effective loss of $2500/year even further.  

As the previous poster just stated, you are spending over $1K on management fees.  Can you handle yourself?

Jeff - I'm guessing you have time to do other deals since you have a management company, and I'm guessing you also have economic capacity to do additional deals if you can afford to write a $20K check right now to exit the property.   If these statements are correct, I would personally do the refi and go out and look for another cash flowing deal with that $20K. 

Just my two cents based on the facts I've read, but I'm making any glaring mistakes in my assumptions, please feel free to point them out.  :)

Sorry, reread the thread and realized the $17K is total expenses. Again, you can't think about it this way because he is going to have expenses like this on any house he buys. He has cash flow coming in to offset most of that amount. I would definitely refi and hold. If you can increase rent down the road $100/month you wipe out half your annual loss, and $200/all of it (the rent used to be $200 higher, presumably it can get back there down the road).

Where is the $17K spend a year coming from? Couldn't trace to it in the thread. I agree with Sam on this one (although if someone could clarify the $17K I may change my mind haha). Why lock in a $20K loss right now? This assumes you feel good about not having troubles keeping it rented. Yes a big expense could come up and make that worse, but that is going to be a risk for any property so I don't think you should factor that in.

Darrell - congrats on the first step towards real estate investing. I'm also in Louisville. You'll get many answers on this question but the best place to figure out value is comparing comps on recent comparable sales (size, location, etc). You can also use Zillow.com's estimate as a quick back of the envelope but those numbers aren't always the most accurate. Good luck!

Hello, I've searched the forums for this question but haven't seen it specifically asked. Right now I am a 25% partner in an LLC that currently owns eight rental SFRs. We have a $1M liability policy on each individual property. Would it be helpful for me to personally get personal umbrella insurance to protect me from any lawsuits, or is this not necessary due to the LLC structure and insurance currently in place?