All Forum Posts by: Ross Leavitt

That sounds potentially like a great project. Have you estimated your rehabbing costs?

Bought a duplex, one side was vacant, the other side had a single tenant in a 3-bed rental, been there for 21 years and his rent was never raised. Paying half of market rent.

Googling his name produced a long list of court cases. Apparently he sues everyone for everything, and actually appealed one case all the way to the 9th Circuit. We gave him a no-cause notice, but I'm not betting he's going to comply!

@Sam Shueh Oregon calls salesmen brokers. Sort of like calling a mechanic an automotive technician, but more confusing. Once a broker has the experience required to be independent, that license is called principal broker.

FWIW, we have used a designer on all our new construction and everything has turned out very well. I assume an architect would have been much more expensive. 

Wow, all of these things have been part of Oregon landlord-tenant law for years. Except #13, which seems like it would create issues with turnover logistics.

Oregon landlords are being drawn and quartered right now. Maybe we should sell our Oregon investments and move to Washington.

If you find a great broker who knows rentals and investments, you'd be better off benefitting from his expertise than trying to re-invent the wheel. If you can't find someone like that, do it yourself. 

On the other hand, if this guy is actually going to mentor you, you should take his advice. If you don't, he probably won't invest much time in you.

I used onlineed.com for my pre-license course. 

@John Chapman, BRRRR is Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat. It's a strategy to end up with minimal cash invested after doing a cash-out refi, but it's getting harder lately with tight rules for cash-out refis.

@Tyler Combs, that's encouraging to hear you've still been able to find projects in Portland. I have two questions about how the rent control law will impact you.

First, while the law lets us give a no-cause notice to tenants to remodel their unit, I believe we will still be limited to the normal 7%+index annual increase. The only exception I can see is if the tenant leaves on their own volition, or if we give them a for-cause. Does this leave you any more motivation to remodel apartments?

Second, are you worried that the 7% figure will be incrementally lowered in the future? And do you think property values will be impacted, as investors become reluctant to pay such low CAP rates for properties with limited rent upside?

I'm worried for our Corvallis rentals, but it seems like someone doing what you do will be hit the hardest by this.

How about the effect on CAP rates down the road? We have a number of student housing properties that are valued by their CAP rates. We are getting top dollar for rents, but here's my concern: what starts as 8-10% allowable increase will go down each year until we can only raise it 1-2%, like everywhere else that has rent control.

When that happens, I'm worried that the properties will become less desirable to investors, and that will hurt the value. What do you all think?

So sorry to hear that Lance! What neighborhood is your flip in? We recently finished a flip in Oakridge, and I never did have security on it. I'll have to do that in the future. 

Have you done any other flips locally? It's been such a difficult market to find properties that still have profit in them, so I'm glad to hear you've been able to still do it.