All Forum Posts by: Anthony Angotti

I hate inherited tenants and would often pay more for a property to be delivered vacant to be honest. 

You should go to the inspection physically, but your property manager should handle most of the on site stuff. 

8-12% for PM. The lower the percentage the more they will make up on upcharging maintenance and charging for extra time at certain things like eviction court, leasing, doc prep, etc. 

Everyone chases after the percentage but never checks the agreement for what they may also be charged in addition to that monthly rate.

You’ll learn as you go, don’t get stuck in the trap of thinking you need to learn everything before you buy. Just keep learning what you can and then you’ll figure it out when you pull the trigger. There’s a lot to learn and real estate is hard work, but it’s not complicated at the end of the day. 

My main advice is to start with single family homes in a new market because you’ll have less turnover and less problems generally. Then see if you want to do multi later. 

 If you plan on window AC units then yes absolutely. You might also need more circuits if you have mini split as well. 

I think since you don’t have many outlets and circuits for the house you almost have to do this one. Where is the house at and do most of your competing rentals have air conditioning? 

 We you are house hacking it's a win either way even if it's not a great standalone investment property because you will save so much on rent/housing expense usually that you can use that cash to invest elsewhere and accelerate FI goals. 

Focus less on the CoC and ROI of a house hack and more on how much you are saving on your bills and the eventual appreciation/wealth growth that you will achieve by living there. The main benefit is that you can get a place in a B+ or greater type area usually with less than 5% down and you still save money on your fixed expenses.

Sounds to me like you are stuck a bit in analysis paralysis. Your best move is going to be to find an OK deal (still no need to buy a BAD deal) and just pull the trigger. By getting started and learning by doing you'll accelerate your growth more than if you sit there and look for the best possible deal. When someone is new they can look at a great deal and still talk themselves out of it. There's inherent risk in real estate investing so you can talk yourself out of literally any deal that you want to. 

 We tend to find the best applicants from Zillow usually. For my own properties we have professional pictures taken, virtually stage them, and then post on all of the sites where tenants are looking. 

We do not post signs in the yard because it results in too many nuisance calls with nonserious prospects. 

If you want to do photos and virtual staging in Pittsburgh where the leasing fee is usually under $1500 then you should expect to pay for that yourself and not the PM since that's a good chunk of the leasing fee if they pay for it themselves. 

Single family homes are generally pretty easy to find tenants for if they are clean, reasonably renovated, and priced appropriately. With most owners that we manage for I find that the biggest issues are either that they did not turnover the space entirely or they want to price ahead of the median rent too far. If you have a reason to price high you can do that, but be ready to extend your vacancy a good bit usually.  

 Honestly, both? 

Would you break even on the house hack in New Jersey, IMO house hacking is a no brainer almost anywhere, but it also depends if you like where you live and if you want to move. If you like where you live and it's cheap then there's no reason to move just for real estate. House Hacking is a great money decision, but also a personal living situation question just as much if not more. 

If you invest in a market like Pittsburgh where I live and invest you can likely find something in the 100-200k range to get an out of state portfolio started, but you should know it's very much a get rich slow move and that you'll want to have a plan to grow in the area to make setting up an out of state team worthwhile. 

I think it comes down mostly to if you like where you live and want to stay there, or if you are kind of indifferent and want to move to start your investment portfolio.

 I don't know how much the deposits were but if it's just two tenants you are more than likely to pay more in lawyer fees and court appearance fees than what you'd get from an agent. Especially since the responsibility of verifying you got this stuff was yours.

Yes, you should have had you agent notice this (I always check for this for my clients), but pursuing legal action is going to be a waste of time and money. Just give the tenants their deposits so you don't have to deal with losing three times the deposit for holding improperly and move on. 

Since you said you're new I'll let you know that in this business plenty of people are going to be incompetent, sleazy, or both and you are going to get screwed over. Your best tool in your real estate investor arsenal is going to be thick skin and long memory. The longer I've been doing this I realize that REI is stressful enough and not stressing out about the small stuff is going to be the thing that keeps you sane. If you go after everyone just to get even you are going to drive yourself incredibly crazy since in practice real estate should be so easy, but all of the idiots and bad people are out there as land mines to suck your energy and make things difficult.

Since the financial damage here is assumingly quite low take the lesson and move on. Don't let this sap your energy and keep moving, you'll achieve more that way. 

If you need a lawyer for something worth hiring a lawyer for though Scolieri-Beam Law Group do a great job on everything real estate related.  

 Yes, but it's best to come for the inspection if you can. 

@Simon Powe

Multifamily will generally have higher turnover than single family and it can also be a bit higher maintenance since the tenants seem to take less care of the units. This is based on my own experience, but I think it's similar for most MF owners. 

You'll also want to pick your unit size based on the part of town you invest in. 

If the area is known for a good school district you won't want 1 bed places. If it's known as a more entertainment area your large units will usually be roommates so it's sometimes best to shoot for 1/2 bed units. 

That's something not a lot of ppl think about. 

Also, you'll want to look at value add opportunities with utility optimization, either a reno project to pass utilities on to tenants or some kind of billing system. If you want to be buying right now and can't self source leads though you're probably going to need to adjust your acceptable numbers and focus on the long term. Expecting big cash flow in multifamily apartments right now is kind of a fool's errand because if you find it it's probably in an area that won't be kind for out of state ppl with a third party property manager. 

Hoi! 

My extended family lives in the Netherlands and I've always been curious about investing there, but most of my properties are in the States. I also have investigated using the DAFT visa to move one day. This seems like an opportunity to look into it more. I'd be happy to connect and learn more. 

Ik vind het ook altijd leuk om mijn Nederlands te oefenen! 

Fijne Dag!

Tony

 Most of our out of state investors in Pittsburgh find success depending on their expectations. Things just require more ongoing expenses percentage wise out of state because you have to pay people to do everything for you and you will have a longer time building relationships with vendors even when getting decent referrals. 

Managing from afar can be done on single family homes with a few properties, but you'll still need a solid leasing agent and handyman which can sometimes be hard to find. 

You also will want to stick to on market properties at first because the purchase process and evaluation process (namely title and inspections) will be more defined. Off market deals usually have nonrefundable deposits and a clunkier process that isn't as suited for out of state people until they have good contacts in the area to evaluate the property (mostly contractors that feel comfortable evaluating projects for you). The vast majority of contractors won't want to give bids on properties while under contract unless they have a relationship with that person from prior jobs. Otherwise they just run around and bid projects for people that don't close. So as a newer person in an area if you want a lot of bids before you close you'll normally end up with the more expensive guys or the ones that don't have work at the moment (usually for a reason). Even on referrals a lot of contractors are hesitant to run around for investors new to an area until they trust that they will actually get work out of it.  

If you consider Pittsburgh in the future I'm happy to talk about the market and help you get set up.