All Forum Posts by: Patrick M.

You will find a wide variety of answers and they will be tide to the market you are in and the class of rental.

We have done it all. Facebook and Craigslist were tried and are we no longer bother.

Cozy is used because it is free and spreads your listing to 2 other sites. But nothing beats Zillow, I am happy to pay for their service because they get the job done.

@Ryan Copeland @Hannah McBee

this will be our6th year. We have 2 buildings (4 and 5 unit) and believe me, we are all good! We thought about going in for more but we work W-2's and frankly multi families are out of reach right now. 
We run them ourselves so they demanded a lot of our time as I learned to become a landlord and rehab them. Now they are a pleasure and any issues that may arise I am paid handsomely to handle.

We have always been w-2 workers, so for us they are really magical. Before that any increase in wealth was tied to an increase in labor or other sacrifice. Now we see our initial 2 years of repositioning paying massive dividends. It was certainly tough... on our jobs, families and even us from time to time. But now- sunshine and lollipops.

But believe me- I had to change to become a good, professional landlord.

Snowballs

@Craig McLaughlin Apples and Kumquats. Pulling in a 12% return on an initial investment in a rental property can't be compared to an investment account that is reducing your tax base, reinvesting dividends and most importantly- compounding.

I am not knocking one over the other, I have and love both, but they are 2 vastly different vehicles. I have no problem with paying taxes on my windfall of retirement accounts! I have paid the tiniest fraction of money to maintain them, they have provided me tax deferral today, they have grown tax free, and they have compounded absolutely beautifully and it gets better the longer they are invested. Damn right Uncle Sam wants his slice that's why there are RMD's. But they are far far more liquid then RE. I can control the how it is dispersed and plan my taxes accordingly. 

My RE investment throws of a very nice chunk of change, but it costs a lot to maintain it, it is not liquid and it costs an awful lot of money to make it liquid. And I would be betting on a serious curbing of 1031, and other RE friendly tax breaks before Roth being challenged.

So 2 vastly different animals. If you can have both, have both, but don't rob your future self of compounding!

Worst case scenario is everything goes pear shaped and your loan converts to a taxable withdraw. Best case scenario you put your money back in and don't rob your future self (but for the replacement with after tax dollars.) 

Many of the answers to your questions will be determined on your location.

Here in NJ we are married to our tenants. When I took over I made sure everyone had a full, up to date deposit of 1 and 1/2 months rent. This was formally sent to the tenants by registered certified mail. 2 tenants moved out by the next month partly because of this. I did an after inspection introduction and walk through of every apartment and notified all of their responsibilities and what needed to change. A new lease was sent out that encompassed the remainder of the time on their current term. I then began papering them as they violated those terms and were late. This was a very difficult time for me as I did battle and learned the ropes. 5 more would exit in the coming months.

The 2 that remained are good tenants who adjusted themselves to a more professional operation and were happy for it.

I never, ever made a representation or commitment that was not on paper in a notice to cease or quit.

Tell a homeowner that they are capped on the resale of their house by the cost of inflation every year it is owned (around 1% usually). Yeah good luck.

As to the original question, I think the guy is an idiot for blabbing about how he has ended renting his property but is likely to still take all of the tax advantages that he would otherwise lawfully be entitled to. He should list it at the rent he wants and keep his mouth shut.

Rent control is a losing proposition for towns, communities, tenants and landlords. Personally, I think it is more of a loss for them then the landlords. Landlords just stop investing in their properties and turn a modestly larger profit every year.

@Jason Shackleton I had a great friend who helped me when I became interested and started out. He always said, "Nothing beats opening the mailbox on the first of the month and seeing all those checks!"

He would tell all of his prospective tenants, "I'm the only guy you'll meet that has 13 birthdays... 12 of them I celebrate on the 1st of each month, the 13th I celebrate when I was born, you don't have to worry about that one but if you ever forget my other 12 you'll be looking for a new place to live."

My god, he taught me how to handle my inherited, bad tenants, and I ousted them all without going into court. They would have ALL been taking advantage of this moratorium.

@Michael A. Thank you!

@Jason Young I would highly recommend reading The simple path to wealth by JL Collins. It is a light read, but very informative from a man who has had his hand in a number of "investment pies" throughout life. When you call mutual funds crap shoots it makes me feel like you are invested in exotic mixes... KISS, put your money in an SP 500 index.... no crap shoot. "if [you] use past performance to guess at the future value..." your money could double itself 3 times by the time you retire: 300k, 600k, 1.2 million... and that doesn't even account for future contributions!

Also, I would be concerned with just starting a new job and taking on the responsibility of being a landlord... it is far from passive income.

Best move we ever made.... We were just reflecting on it not too long ago. Man those 1st couple months and years were tough (repositioning). But by far the best "now" financial move we ever made... and it snow balls. Now we can pay for schools, fully fund IRA's, contribute to 529's... LOVE IT!

My heart goes out to the landlords that are affected by this. 

I am a little less sympathetic to people that complain about it when the other political party did it but not theirs... but that is the nature of things.

I don't see the foreclosures hitting the same levels as 2008 because we have a HUGE SFR rental industry driven by investment firms and hedge funds that did not exist in 2008.

I tend to think that the people on BP are the cream of the crop, be they LL's or PM's or both. I think this is going to be a momentous occasion to learn going forward.

While I do not fault this man AT ALL, I have seen numerous post over the past couple years where people did not run their business like a business. Maybe they thought they would be the "good guy" or maybe they didn't have the stomach for it or maybe they were fulfilling some friendship they did not previously have.

In April we saw people vowing not to charge rent during the pandemic and others regretting that they had not moved forward on evictions when they should have. Others regretted that they did not screen more thoroughly while some shrugged it off because they considered their tenants family. Every single one of them did not run their business like a business.

While they will not be the entirety of the list of people who suffer under this moratorium, they are nonetheless a large segment.

As the man said, no one is expecting any other business to give stuff away for free... But imagine if you are the one grocer who is running your business like a business and the other ones are giving their product away, or leaving the door unlocked at night or slashing prices to be nice... Then people are going to start to think you grocers don't really need that money after all.