All Forum Posts by: Zachary Taylor

Hi @Jack Hulslander and welcome to Bigger Pockets.  It's great to see the New Hampshire community growing.

What types of properties are you looking into?  Are you planning to invest in the Keene area or elsewhere?

Best of luck with your goal and let us know how your expansion goes.  I'd love to hear about your progress as I just sold my first investment property and I plan to buy a new multi-unit using the equity we had at some point this year.

Hi @David Haertel, you may want to check out the NHREIA. I haven't been yet but a friend of mine has. It meets in Manchester. 

http://www.nhreia.com/

It provides a place not only to meet other investors in the area but also has speakers from whom you can learn area specific investment information.

Good luck with the first deal, and be sure to let us know how it goes. I'm selling my first rental property and planning to use the equity to buy a multiunit in the next 6 months.

New update, after speaking with the tenants, they have agreed to return the kitchen carts that they claim were taken mistakenly by their movers.  They also claim that our microwave broke soon after they moved in.  The property managers never disclosed this to me but looking at pictures from a prior inspection, a different microwave than ours was visible. As for the other items, I think I'm going to mark this down as the cost of learning.  Between having two different property management companies and transferring security deposits during this tenants occupancy, I don't have enough faith that the security deposit was handled appropriately the entire time.  I'm no lawyer either but I'm sure if a property manager mishandles the deposit, the liability falls on me.

@Account Closed Thank you so much for the explanation.  This certainly confirms my fears regarding the situation.  I didn't handle the deposit the entire time the tenant was in my property.  It was transferred from one management company to another and then finally to me.  I have no way of knowing that they handled the security deposit to the letter of the law and I don't want to be held liable for paying them for the mistakes of someone else.

@Kimberly H., that's an interesting alternative to the security deposit.  I'll certainly keep that in mind if I start investing in a treble damages state again in the future.  Covering damages is all I'm trying to do at this point.  In this case, even if I deduct out what I think I can prove, I'm losing.

@Joe Splitrock, I definitely understand your perspective on this.  Emotionally, I feel the same way about it.  But as others have mentioned, MA holds you to the fire if you're a landlord and so I need to make sure this is completely a business decision.

@Charlie MacPherson, I wasn't aware that failing to notify tenants when you change escrow banks could put you at risk.  Previously, their deposit was held by my old property managers.  Once I dropped them, I took over the escrow but I doubt the old company notified them of the changes.  I might need to reconsider my strategy on this one.

Fantastic dialogue though everyone.  My sincerest thanks.  This has been a great learning experience for me. Hopefully others that are doing business in states with treble damages and biased tenant laws, such as Massachusetts, can learn from this as well so they don't get in a similar situation.

Thank you all for the input.  It has certainly been eye opening.  I knew the laws in Mass were weighted greatly in the tenants favor before I turned my old home into a rental, but I didn't realize I could be penalized so severely for mishandling accounts or bookkeeping errors.  This is part of the reason I'll be doing my real estate investing in the near future outside MA.  Of course I still love my home state, but NH tenant/landlord laws are far less punitive towards landlords.

@Victor Eng, this was exactly what I was looking for, thank you again.  Unfortunately when we got these tenants, we used a property management company that we have since stopped using.  I know there was an initial walk through done and there may even have been a condition form signed, but when we cut ties (for business reasons, they raised their fee 25+% and it was already too high in my opinion), they didn't return all the forms or even the keys they held for that matter.  I will definitely tread lightly and I may have to chalk a lot of this up to the cost of learning.

@Douglas Snook, the tenants moved out December 17th so it has been less than 30 days.  But they aren't the most responsive about getting back to me so my other worry is they drag their feet responding, assuming they know about the treble penalty.

@Charlie MacPherson, after reading the rules regarding security deposits in MA and the potential penalties that could be incurred, I would think hard about holding onto a security deposit.  What are your thoughts on requiring it as more a proof of funds and then returning it right after the check clears?  Not requiring a deposit might attract the wrong kind of tenant to your property.  But asking for it and then returning it right away will weed out anyone that can't afford three months rent up front (assuming you use the standard deposit and the security is one months rent).  It may also help build some good rapport with the tenant as you could style it as a show of trust rather than not wanting the liability.

@Dan Dwyer, thanks for the encouragement.  Growing up my parents never had a good thing to say about landlords, and they owned a house my whole life.  I never could have imagined such a large, positive community of real estate investors that want to help each other learn and succeed the right way.  I'm glad I've been able to contribute to that so far and I'm looking forward to being able to provide help to others in the future.

@Russell Brazil

Thanks, I will start there and see where it gets me.

@Victor Eng

I must have left that part out.  We have one month's rent as a security deposit, $1650 plus the minuscule amount of interest it has gained in the past two years.

Hi all,

I own a townhouse in Bellingham, MA that I have rented for the past four years.  Our tenants lease came up at the end of December and we are now under contract to sell at the end of January.  The tenants left the property filthy (our lease requires the property to be left broom clean).  We cleaned it as best we could but it needs a professional cleaning.  There was some minor to moderate damage to the interior outside normal wear and tear. They changed not only the locks but the entire dead bolt and door knobs on the front door (both of these are specifically prohibited in our lease).  But the biggest thing for us was they took two kitchen carts, a microwave, curtains, and the shelves from our closet shelving systems with them.  All added up they stole about $800 worth of property.  The tenants now claim that all this was theirs.  I photographed all of the damage and I plan to put together an itemized report to give to the tenants.

Unfortunately, none of these things were specifically mentioned in the lease agreement, but we do have pictures prior to their move in of most of these things in the unit.

I'm hoping for suggestions on how I should go about charging the tenants for all of these things?  Should I try to only charge for certain things?  Should I try negotiating with them in regards to all of this?  Should I just let it go and write it off as a loss since we're selling the property and none of these things were specifically entered into the purchase and sales?

I really don't want to travel to Massachusetts to go to small claims court over it all in the event they fought back.  We bought the townhouse when we lived in MA, but have since moved an hour and a half north to New Hampshire.

Thank you all in advance.

Hello everyone,

I'm wondering how people handle their expense reserves and cash flow.  Do you keep it in the same account? Do you separate the two? Do you put the expense reserves in a checking and cash flow into a savings?

I know to keep the rental income separate from personal funds and to keep security deposits in their own savings account but how much separation is enough/too much?  Or is this one of those whatever you're most comfortable with things?  Is it easier to just keep it all in one account and let Quickbooks keep track of what's what?

Thanks!

Thanks for the welcome everyone. I look forward to this journey ahead. Link, we are interested in anything that will cash flow but more than likely multi unit properties. Fortunately for us, Concord, Manchester, and Nashua are all within half an hour of us which gives three solid small city markets with investment potential. Are you looking at any particular markets? Do you know the viability of the rental market in the lakes region? Any chance you know whether vacation rental properties in that area are viable investments? Best of luck to all of you as well.

Greetings Bigger Pockets Community,

My name is Zack Taylor.  I'm 33, I have a wife and two year old son and they are my world.  I currently work full time for the government, but I hope to use real estate investing to secure my family's financial future, and to potentially reach some financial goals ahead of schedule by obtaining cash flowing rental properties.

I found Bigger Pockets at the recommendation of a friend and coworker that is planning to begin investing in the next year or two.  I have since been listening to the podcast and have spent a little time reading the forums to try and learn as much as I can.  I also have a few books checked out of the library to get me started.

My wife and I initially got into "investing" after we bought our second home.  We had bought our first home, a two story townhouse, in 2009 in Bellingham, Massachusetts.  In 2012 when we were looking to find a new home in New Hampshire, where I work, the value of our townhouse hadn't risen enough for us to justify selling.  We've rented our townhouse for four years but our current tenants are moving out this month and with that we have decided to sell the property.  This will allow us to use some of that equity we had built up to purchase a property with better investment possibilities.

Our long term goal is to build a portfolio of cashflowing rental properties that we will hold and hopefully pass on to our children.  We plan to acquire our first true investment property within the next six to nine months and work towards turning that into four to five properties within the next ten years.  We also want to be able to take care of our parents as they start aging and we believe that having passive income through rental properties is the best way to offset those costs.

Thank you for spending the time reading this lengthy (I like to think thorough) introduction.  I look forward to learning everything I can from this community and I can't wait to start on this journey.