All Forum Posts by: Tom Sylvester

For me, choosing a tenant is not just one piece of criteria. It starts with the initial phone call, seeing the tenant at the walk-through, then screening the application. One bad item will not disqualify a tenant, but several will start to paint a picture. If there is one bad item, we will typically ask the tenant to explain. There might be a reasonable explanation (like the guy in the article).

I believe that landlords should use any information available to make a decision, but they also should night blindly say no just because of a potential ding.

@Ameen Al Qudsi - The "real estate field" is pretty broad. What specific focus/area of real estate are you looking at?

I personally did management. It had a good mix of finance, marketing, business structure, etc. I believe if you understand how to run a business, which area that business is in (ex. real estate or opening a store), you have the tools to be successful.

Well, that is certainly 1 way to "flip" a house.

"What I would do to the house, likely is not going to be what the buyer would do to the house."

@Rich Wahl - This needs to basically be the same. To the point in my last post, you can't have corian on your rehab estimate if the area/ARV demands granite and your rehabber will use granite.

Another thing... you have to be familiar with your area and the quality of houses for your ARV. If you houses demand granite an you put in corian in your estimate sheet, your estimates will be off

@Rich Wahl - Everyone may not agree, but here is my honest feedback. Don't start with wholesaling. That's like asking someone with no automotive background to estimate the cost to fix a car that they found abandoned on the side of the road. If you want to learn more, check out a blog that I wrote in the past - Thinking About Real Estate Investing? Skip Wholesaling

With that said, here would be my recommendations to answer your question.

1. Pick up both of J Scott's books. Read the rehabbing one first, then read the estimating one. J does an extremely thorough job of detailing the rehab process and every potential aspect of a renovation.
2. Create a detailed spreadsheet (maybe using J's book as reference) for every potential aspect of a renovation. Call around and get quotes on some of the major ones (ex. cost per square for a roof replacement, either tear-off or 2nd layer). Put these in your spreadsheet.
3. When evaluating properties, work backwards like most rehabbers do. Determine the ARV, multiply by 70%, the subtract out all of the rehab costs. Multiply your estimated rehab costs by 20% for your fudge factor. If you really want to be great, actually have some contractors come out to the property to give you quotes.
4. Now that you have a vetted deal, start marketing it.

Again, I would recommend that you not start with wholesaling if you have no experience in renovations.

Thanks for all of the responses. To give a little more information about this specific situation:

• I invest in a rural area. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult to get contractors to a property on off hours because there are only a few in the area. My normal electrical contractor was not available on Saturday night, so I was trying to call around for backups.
• I live ~45 minutes away from the property.
• We also had a snow storm Saturday night that dumped 12" of snow on us.
• Come to find out the tenant was drunk. He apologized the next day after we resolved the issue.

Lost story short I was able to pick up a new meter on Saturday morning and meet an electrician at the property to install it. The utility provider was then able to turn the power back in, so we had the power back on within 12 hours and the tenant did not lose any meat.

--

@Michaela G. - This property was a duplex. I told the tenant to put a few bags of ice in the freezer and keep it closed overnight. I reimbursed him for the ice. We also live in NY so the outside temperature was cooler.

@Cal C. - You got me. I was working on getting the power back on and definitely did not proofread my post. In terms of the electrician, he is not all to blame. The voltage at the meter was pretty consistent, but obviously as it was burning out that is when the light were dimming and the voltage was probably bouncing around. He replaced the breaker because it was blown and said we might want to check the meter if issues continue. I probably should have been a little more proactive in shutting off the power, replacing the meter and getting it turned back on instead of waiting for a Saturday night.

@Robert Leonard - Thanks for the ideas. Had we not been able to get the power back on the next morning, I probably would have taken a generator to the property until we had. Like you pointed out, I knew the meat would not go bad overnight.

@Mark Langdon - Thanks for the ideas. Had it come to that, we would have done of of those options.

@Ryan M. - Thanks for the comments. As I mentioned above it is difficult to get contractors off hours since we live in a rural area. This is the first time we ran into this problem, because our primary electrician was out of the area. But based on that, we are working to secure a back-up for each of our primary guys.

@Stephanie W. - Luckily we were able to get it resolved, but that would have been the next step.

@Curtis N. - Great to see that your advice aligned with other posters. Luckily we were able to get the power back on, otherwise we would have taken a generator over.

@Andrea M. - Thanks for the response.

@Edward Burns - Thanks for sharing that. It's a good idea to look at the rules/regulations around the utility company.

@Andy Collins - I agree with you. We use the same people 90% of the time. In this case, our electrician was out of town and we did not have a backup. Lesson learned.

So I have a situation that will be fun to play out over the next few days, but interested to see what other landlords would do.

Tenants contacted us last week because their lights were dimming. Had an electrition go out, he reviewed the panel and replaced a circuit breaker. Tonight (Saturday night) the tenants contact us again about the light dimming issue. We had our electrical supplier come out. They turned off the power to the property (for safety issues) due to a burnt lug. They said they can not turn on the power until an electrition takes care of the problem.

So we are working on getting an electriction out to the property, but it is difficult to get a response on a Saturday night. One tenant called pretty upset because he has several hundred dollars worth of meat in a chest freezer that he does not want to go back. I told him that we were working to get the issue fixed, but recommended he either borrow a generator from a friend or go and put several bags of ice in the freezer until it gets fixed.

Hopefully we can get the issue resolved quickly, but I'm curious to hear what other landlords would do in this situation.

That CEO doesn't mess around.

I use GQueues and have it integrated into Google Calendar. I wrote a post on it a few months ago.

Put Your Real Estate Business Management on Steroids with “GQueues”

To be honest there are a lot of great apps out there for managing tasks, it all depends on your needs and preferences.