All Forum Posts by: Jeff N.

On top of Bienes advice, I would also strongly suggest including a guarantor in the lease who also shares responsibility for any liability. Typically with students it would be a parent or guardian.

I probably need to re-qualify my statement about my PM having good occupancy rates. You are correct, pretty much anything on the bus route rents on its own. Unfortunately since I don't live near there I have to use a PM.

Don't own rentals in other areas. I have been looking to expand out of CS, but I always end up purchasing another unit in CS. I actually placed a contract recently in Virginia Beach, but it fell apart 2 weeks in. The cash-flow has been good in CS and the university continues to increase its student population year after year.

You own in CS?

Are you just trying to get link exposure. You just created 10 new topics. Just questioning the validity of these posts.

No, probably in their late 30's. They are a local company down in College Station, but recently got swallowed up by REMAX. Not sure if that is a good or bad mix.

Bryan, No major issues. They do very well with occupancy rates and handling tenant issues. Unfortunately, I rate their communication a "C-".

I like doing all my business via email instead of picking up the phone so that I have records of communication. Unfortunately their email response times are very poor and usually requires a phone call to kick it off.

Keep in mind these PM rates are in a very transient Texas college town, so the most we typically get is a 3yr tenant. This may explain the better than norm rates.

Thanks for sharing Rick. I have been to the Nordic countries, but never to these places.

BTW, I'm sure Russia will be on its way to free market capitalism with Putin back in charge soon. :mrgreen:

I have a few rentals that I use a PM due to the location. Here's my breakdown:

50% 1 month rent for new lease.
25% 1 month rent for lease renewal.
5% monthly fee.

I'm curious to know how much you pay and how good of a job they are doing for you.

You have a few options as a veteran that others can get. Such as VA loans which allow you to get no money down mortgages and not have to pay mortgage insurance.

But IMO the military credit unions never got caught up in the mortgage mess. Allowing them to lend at pretty much the same criteria as before. Most due to them not selling their mortgages, so they had a vested interest in maintaining performing notes.

Good luck on getting approved.

I live in a military town, which inherently has a lot of RE turnover. I really do not see much more lending obstructions with buying today than I did five years ago. The people that did not over-leverage and treat their home as a credit card are having no difficulty getting financed with little down, as long as they can document required, stable income.

I'm only seeing tighter requirements on the REI lending. Even there, with 25-35% down you have a myriad of options.

One more suggestion for improved Ad CTR for non donating members.

The top right column adsense block becomes pretty much irrelevant to return visitors over time since the ads are not in your line of sight when reading threads. If you remove this ad block and move the main category block to the top it would be much more effective for navigation. Then I would suggest you place a single 468 width adsense ad under the first post of each thread.

http://www.ponywear.com/misc/bp_layout1.jpg

IMO this will result in a more effective right column navigation setup and relevant ads would be scanned by readers on each thread view; hopefully resulting in a higher CTR.