All Forum Posts by: Shane Johnson

@Joel Owens

OP said property is vacant.

I would drive over to the area, and knock on every door of the 4 plexes around there to meet the tenants, and ask them how much they pay. Dont mention your trying to buy that 4plex, but just mention you own one in the area, and looking to increase the rents or something.

Clean mine in the fall when doing my fall clean up, so they are clean and functional for the winter months. I just scoop it out and call it a day. Keep it simple :) Only had to clean them out in the spring at my first property, due to an overflow of "helicopters" aka seedlings.

Id still recommend the background check. While most Pastors will be great people, they are still people.

Example - local priest here was molesting children, and ended up murdering a man who was going to whistle blow the whole situation to the community.

Not to get off topic, and this is extreme case of this, but, just saying.

I was going to say the same as Aaron. In this market, with how low vacancy is, you are in a great position to have your apartment leased very quickly. With most closing periods between 60-90 days, that is plenty of time to line up a tenant.

Go find a real deal and pull the trigger my friend.

What @Wade Sikkink said, except EIN's are free....

I am guessing your attorney charged you $150 in labor to file the EIN application?

I second the duct cleaning and filter change, based on experience, and all the other threads i just read about this last night :)

Thanks for sharing! Sometimes I need motivation to keep pushing forward on this stuff!

@Pat L.

Ok fine, I am going to say $174 a sq ft then Mr Barker. :)


PS - 28k in prop taxes?!?! on how big of a lot? that is INSANE.

What is the mill rate? I think we are around 1.7% here, which I am sure will go to like 2% when they build a much overdue high school.

@Tony Licen - exactly. I have a builder friend locally, GC's at least 30 homes a year (or maybe it was on pace for 50 this year? dont remember) The example he showed me, he doubled his profit on a $400k home build, simply because of what he purchased the lot for.

@Chris Wyche

The tightening restrictions on billboards are common nationwide.
The Federal Aid HIghway Act of '56 was passed, and interstates were born. Billboards followed. As in all gold rushes, regulation was needed. In '65 Lyndon and Ladybird Johnson made a huge push to keep the highways beautiful, and the Beautification act was passed, with lots of regulations on them. There has been many amendments since then, and I am sure more will follow. There is also many state and local laws that apply as well. I know for example, in the township my parents live in, you cannot construct any new billboard. Here is the just of it from Wiki:

It can be tough to get into the business these days I would think, with how many big players there are, but I have no doubt that there still is areas for the little guy to make money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Beautification_Act