All Forum Posts by: Andrew Syrios

@Andrew Syrios

I just read these two blogs and they have a WEALTH if information on student rentals between them.

You can tell you know what you're talking about. These blogs were very informative and eloquent.

Thanks for sharing these with me!

Great articles @Andrew Syrios. I would add that each school has it's own culture of rentals and how things work. Wherever you choose, preferably the school in the area you live, you have to find out how things work. Do students look for houses in the fall or spring for next year? What is the average rental rate for a nice/average/dump property? Bedrooms and bathrooms absolutely make a difference. The more bedrooms you have, you HAVE to have the bathrooms to back it up. You can imagine the traffic jam if you have a 4 bedroom house and only 1 bathroom, especially if girls are living in the house (sorry ladies, you know it's true). 

Otherwise, to answer some more of your questions, yes you will have more turnover, but if you have a nice house, you can get students to live there 2-3+ years, especially if they stay for grad school. I've never had a student rental not rent out for the next year, so for vacancy rates I simply put 4% for the 2 weeks it's empty every year while it gets turned over. Regarding students trashing houses, as long as you set the expectations up front, it really helps. I've never had students trash a house (regular renters, definitely another story) as long as you take care of them and they know their parents are cosigners that will rain destruction upon them if they screw up. I wouldn't say they appreciate faster, but their values as rentals will be higher overall because of the higher rents. 

@Andrew Syrios The hard thing with a Brrrr strategy is from what I have seen. If you use a hard money lender on a 200k house you still need about 40k or so to put into the deal because they may only lend out 80% of the value of house and repairs and then you add on their fees and interest. So at that point it seems very similar to just going the traditional route and putting 25% down and then you have less risk. Am I missing something there?