12 Tips for Being a Good Landlord and Having Happy Tenants Every landlord would like to lower the turnover in their properties. It’s costly to attract and retain good tenants, not to mention the costs you incur when they move out and you have to turn a vacant rental. It just makes good business sense to strive to have happy, long term tenants in your properties. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have good systems in place and treat this like a business. Here are some … [Read more...]
Dealing With Tenant Drama: Are You Ready?
July 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Dealing With Tenant Drama: Are You Ready?Tenants are the reason we survive as landlords. By paying their rent, tenants put gas in our cars, food on the table and hopefully a little money in the bank. Tenants, however, are human, and being human means they bring drama. Are you ready for it?Sometimes the drama is petty.“My roommate and I don’t like each other anymore, she needs to leave.”Sometimes it is more serious.“I lost my job.”You as the landlord need to be ready to deal with … [Read more...]
2012 Rental Update: Increases are a Mixed Bag
May 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
2012 Rental Update: Increases are a Mixed BagIf you’re thinking about raising the rent or building a business plan based on a rent increase this year, this might be a good time for a reality check on the rosy forecasts issued at the beginning of the year (see Rental Outlook 2012: The Good Times Roll on).Unfortunately for single family landlords, virtually all the rent price data out there is multifamily, which reflects poorly on real estate data providers since there are now more single family … [Read more...]
Location & Jobs Should Be Priority For Real Estate Investors
April 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Location & Jobs Should Be Priority For Real Estate InvestorsAs real estate investors, we should always consider the location we invest in as part of our investing formula. Jobs, schools and a safe place to raise a family are what most end buyers consider when looking to rent or buy a home. If you are investing for the long term, the report below will helpRead the full post here... … [Read more...]
Managing My Own Rental Property?
March 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Managing My Own Rental Property?There are many good reasons to manage your own rental properties. First, there is the common saying that “nobody cares about your property as much as you do.” That’s true and nobody will likely try harder to find and keep good tenants than you will. Another reason to manage your properties is because it will save you a good amount of money. Most rental companies will charge you 10% of the monthly rent. Therefore, if you’re renting a place for $1,500 a … [Read more...]
You Bought an REO Now Where To Start?
February 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
You Bought an REO Now Where To Start?First, Let me set the stage for you. You are a buy and hold investor. You have done all the work required to learn your market and make a great purchase. The escrow just closed and the REO property is now yours.You have a lot to do and you need to know where to start.Each REO property offers its own challenges. I will highlight how I would run the project start to finish as a buy and hold investor:Prepping Your REO For The Tenant The first thing I would … [Read more...]
Getting Rid of Problem Tenants with Cash for Keys
February 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Getting Rid of Problem Tenants with Cash for KeysBuilding a profitable buy and hold rental property business can be tough. A lot of folks fail to treat this as a business and end up getting into trouble. Having systems and following those systems is so important if you are to be successful and keep your sanity.It’s pretty easy fly by the seat of your pants when you only have a few properties. Later on when you have added more rentals, it gets much harder.In the beginning when I bought my first … [Read more...]
Gross Rent Multiplier – Speed Up Your Decision Making
November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Gross Rent Multiplier- Speed up your Decision Making. Techniques to Speed Up Your Decision Making, I outlined three basic measurements to quickly estimate value of an apartment property. These three are:Price per UnitGross Rent Multiplier (GRM)Capitalization Rate (Cap Rate)While it’s easy to plug numbers, each technique has its pros and cons. This tutorial’s objective is to help you understand the key advantage and limitation for each measurement.Exploring Gross Rent MultiplierWe previously … [Read more...]
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How High will Rents Rise?
How High will Rents Rise?With single family rentals soaring, especially in high foreclosure markets, home sales showing signs of life, and more multifamily construction coming on line every day, it doesn’t seem possible that vacancy rates could continue to decline and rents continue to rise.But they are.The commercial real estate research firm Reis reported last week that the apartment vacancy rate fell to 4.7% in the second quarter from 4.9% in the first quarter of the year. It’s the … [Read more...]