All Forum Posts by: Shera Gregory

Solid rancher in Atlanta IL (not G30rgia!) about 30 miles south of Bloomington/Normal IL. 

305 W Clark St Atlanta IL 61723 (Corner of Clark and S Catherine St -- GPS not correct).

Needs about $15k rehab. Have quotes from local licensed contractor. Needs new plumbing, flooring and HVAC upgrades.

Estimate $650 rent for $7,800 income. 

Annual expenses estimated as:

Taxes $865 (actual amount)

Insurance $450

Vacancy $625

Property management $800

Maintenance $500

Capital reserves $800

Est net income $3,760

Feel free to call me for more details: Shera Gregory 804-814-6443

@Dmitriy Fomichenko Great .. even better! I hadn't considered the easiest path which is to rollover the funds directly into my existing Roth. Cool beans. Thanks.

I did try to see if this was answered already but didn't find an exact match to this question. I have a SD Roth IRA and I have the opportunity to begin a Roth 401K at work instead of my regular 401K. I plan to work another few years so it would be great to build up some $$ in a Roth 401K that I could roll into a SD plan when I retire. Question is .. at that point can I use funds from my SD Roth and my SD (former) Roth 401K into a single project? I know I can't combine funds with non-allowed entities. But what about with myself?

Regarding the point about comps .. you are correct to not trust the comps provided by a wholeseller. But you don't have to have your own MLS access. Think further down the line .. you will sell this at some point, right? and you will probably want to use an agent to do that. You could approach a broker with this in mind and ask if they can run comps for you on potential properties with the idea of ultimately being the listing agent. They should also be able to provide some guidance on which areas will be the best for the future resale. You don't want to go crazy with this - they won't be happy to provide comps on dozens of houses. But if you do the work up front to only ask them to help on ones that you are truly interested in you should be able to make that work. And don't be afraid to ask how willing are they to work with you for quite a while before you have a property ready to sell. Some will be more willing than others.

Find one of the small local banks, not a national chain. Get on the phone or go to meet them in person. In Virginia we have Union First Market which is good. I'm not sure who is in the DC area. But the small local banks are usually willing to lend on hard assets. You may only get 70% loan-to-value but that's something to work with. You may need to talk to someone in the commercial side since this is investment property. In one of the podcasts there's a guy who talks about this .. he called a TON of local banks and finally got some traction with the bank that operates out of Walmart (if I'm remembering that right).

Hi -- thanks for offering to share your experience. I'm not sure if things are different from state to state. I live in Virginia and a couple of contractors have told me that trying to re-paint an old porch floor is getting to be as troublesome as asbestos these days. A property we just bought has a plain vanilla front porch floor and, since it's almost 100 years old and has been painted many times, it surely has some lead paint in those layers. One guy said "just do the job on the weekend since the inspectors won't be around". Another said "this could cost you tens of thousands of dollars if you get caught not doing it right". YIKES. What's the deal???

I think it depends on how you plan to acquire your deals and how many you plan to do. It's certainly not necessary from the start. There are lots of forum posts on this topic. One thing that is mentioned by quite a few people who do not get their license is that they don't want to be limited by the requirements you fall under once you have a license. I'm not clear on exactly what they mean by that, but it would be worth finding out.

If you are in the Richmond area be sure to check out the real estate meetup groups. There are a few that have monthly or quarterly meetings and that's also a great way to meet folks who are active in the local real estate market.

Hello @James Sheppard and @Cassie Davis ! The monthly REIA meetup group is an excellent place to meet people in the Richmond area involved in real estate. You will find wholesellers, agents, lawyers, lenders, rehabbers, contractors, landlords and many other species of real estate participants there! Look for the group on meetup.com.

Hope to see you around!

Hi again .. John's post reminded me of something else. If you have to chase down an applicant to get additional info, etc and they don't get right back to you that's BAD. One of the few tenants that I had to evict was someone who I was chasing right from the start. I had been determined to get a house rented in "X" amount of time after the repairs were done so when someone showed up at the door and was really excited about the house before we were even finished I thought I had it made. Then I spent two weeks trying to get her to get all her paperwork to me. That was a huge red flag!

Smoking: Depends on the type of property. We do say no smoking indoors on two of our nicer properties.

Pets: Separate addendum with a pet deposit of about 1/3rd the rent. 

Credit: I look over the credit report and ask questions about anything that had poor payment history. Require 3 times the rent in household income. I put that in my ad so they know up front that this is required.

Felons: Haven't run into that yet. Wouldn't say "no" automatically but would certainly want good references and to be able to talk to the person and their references about the situation.
Age: No restrictions here. Be careful how you screen. Don't violate any protected classes.
First time renters: I don't have a policy for this. We did rent recently to some younger folks who may not have rented a full house before. As with all our renters we sat down at the start and went through the lease page by page and also got them to initial each page of the lease, not just sign at the end. That would be especially important with first time renters.
Previous evictions: We do have someone who had a previous eviction. They disclosed this on the application (that's a point in their favor actually). I spoke to his boss and to him about the situation. Part of the requirement is that he continue to make good on the previous amounts owed. I got 2 month's rent as deposit.
Rent Collection: I use erentpayment to get direct deposit.
Lawn Care: Renters is responsible.
Maintenance issues: I prefer not to have them :)  I have had good success with arranging for a local company to do up to $200 in repairs/fixes without getting pre-approval from me. So the renters can just call them directly. Gets me out of the middle and I don't have to be available to meet the repair person.
Late Fees: $80.
Breaking a lease: This is a tough one because technically they are on the hook for the entire term of the lease but that's barely enforceable. I've heard some folks say that month-to-month favors the landlord because you can give notice more readily.
Using security deposit for repairs: YES! That's what it's for. You just have to document each item with the amount withheld and do that very soon (ie within a week) after the person moves out.