All Forum Posts by: Paul Hitchings

A home will sell best if it is clean, in good condition, and vacant. Staging might help impress or catch a buyer or two, but in general the market conditions affect home price more than that fake bed does.

If you want the most accurate price, get a good appraiser. Realtors can do comparative analysis for price, but appraisers are better at it (usually). 

If you really want the best sales price, you have to get buyers to compete for your home. 

Consider spending a little money to make sure it has some fresh paint, good landscaping, everything is spotless and working.  Don't sell a home with dirt in the front yard and cracked stucco and expect "the best price".

PS - Super bonus tip, shoot a YouTube video of the home and around the neighborhood showing how nice of an area it is to live in. Get a local HS or college student to make the video(s) for like $150. Trust me, I did it for a $1M listing and it worked like a charm :)

FHA

2003 Lexus with over 210K. I am never selling this car. It has three DVD players. One under the driver seat that I have no idea how to operate, one in the head rest that works for both screens and one in the rear for the Navigation, which gave up long ago.  When I retire I am going to tour the country and play DVDs on the headrests at the great amazement of the locals who will ask "What on Earth is a DVD?"

Thank you for your service.

As someone in the military, it is likely that you will move ever few years. I'm not sure how it works, but my family who served was always moving around every few years. Anyways, you will want to consider this in your long-term investment strategies.

Before investing, consider your resources. How much cash do you have, how much monthly disposable income, how much time, what skills do you have, etc.  Some investors want to do everything themselves, others are happy hiring people to seal envelopes, inspect homes, build websites, etc.  There is no one right answer, point is, build your resources into your investment plan.

How will you invest? House hack? Flip? Sandwich lease? Seller-finance? BRRRR? Purchase options? Container homes? Doesn't really matter, but I recommend you consider a type of deal that you can close in less than a year or something you can manage from afar, both in case you are required to move.

The old wisdom was "it takes money to make money", but these days, you can get creative to make deals happen, so I won't even say you need "X saved up" or "Y disposable income" per month to get started. If you have time/energy/resources to put into growing your wealth, you absolutely should.

Once you have selected a type(s) of deal you want to do, when you're comfortable with any background work like setting up businesses, contracts, websites, phone numbers, etc., you can begin to solicit deals.  You don't have to send 1000 letters your first time. Just like you don't need a toll free number, beautiful full color flyers or a $500 website to get started.  Keep it simple in the beginning. Focus on a few deal types, study them, solicit leads, develop those leads, overcome objections, be ready to close deals with your leads and as soon as you have something in contract everything will start falling into place. 

The secret to starting is to start. Good luck friend!

PS - Spend as much face-to-face time with other investors as humanly possible, they are honest, helpful and inspirational.

another piece - marketing campaign, consisting of letters, phone numbers, websites, calls to action, clear branding, etc. Work with either online service or title company to find lists you like, whether it be tax defaults, mortgage defaults, foreclosure, vacant, FOBO, SFR,multi,land, absentee,etc.

Don't forget to put the stamps on the letters crooked and hand-write all the addresses.

In this situation, I would begin an eviction process.  The cards are already on the table.  Waiting until June to solve a problem you have today is not sensible.   

I think they both need to be served but fortunately, you know where they both live, so I doubt service will be an issue.

At this point, even if tenant says "I promise both of us will move out by June", the mother has already expressed her intent to be difficult, so I would take anything the mother and daughter say from here on out with a grain of salt. 

Let the tenant know you can't stop the eviction process until she and her mother are out of the unit.

The issue here isn't really the sub-lessor, or the lease violation, it is the fact that you have an occupant who has expressed a clear interest in basically doing whatever they feel like, irrespective of the landlord. That issue alone is worth getting rid of these tenants ASAP.

There is a home in Detroit I'm looking at under $5K. I have enough for the purchase but not enough for rehab. I'm scratching my head for solutions to partner up with someone local and make it happen. So many practical reasons to invest locally when starting out, but the cost of entry is so low I can't ignore the opportunities...

Why don't you ask the probate attorney handling the case for the owner in question? Probably the single best source. Because if that attorney isn't willing to work with you, doesn't really matter if you can does it?

The reason many become a realtor is because they want to make money helping buyers and sellers close their real estate transactions.  There is limited benefit from being a Realtor if you are doing strictly investment type deals, though I suspect it varies by state and situation.

If you want to make money as new Realtor, I highly recommend you join a team at one of the largest brokerages in your area, a national chain, preferably. You can help learn how transactions flow, resources available to Realtors, do an open house here or there and in general get face time with real estate professionals. Those are all great things about being a Realtor. Only thing is, 95%+ of Realtors don't spend much time thinking about investing in real estate. So I wouldn't necessarily expect to talk about wholesaling/flipping/BRRR with your coworkers on a regular basis. That being said, if you can find a brokerage that works more with investors than others, it could be a wealth of wisdom and information for you.

Bottom line, if you want to be a Realtor, hang out with Realtors, if you want to be an investor, hang out with investors, attorneys, tax professionals, contractors, computer wizards, etc. 

Is the tenant month-to-month or trying to get out of their lease early?

Maybe tenant just wanted to give you notice to move out, but they did some online research and thought they should draft a "notice to quit" based on a website...

Why does tenant want to move out anyways?