Train, train and retrain your tenants I tend to be an open book, especially when I mess up, because it holds me accountable and helps me to learn from mistakes. So, with that fact in mind, I’m going to tell you about something I messed up on with a rental, and then, I’ll tell you how we remedied it. I got a little lax with doing inspections…
Do you take pride in your rentals? As I’ve told you before, I like doing service calls on our rentals. One of the big reasons for this is I get to see how our tenants are keeping the properties. We pride ourselves on good customer service, which includes a fast response time on service calls. So when something breaks, I’m often there within a few hours. As such,…
Sitting at the laundromat with my bank account drained So, I learned some very valuable lessons this week at the laundromat. First, laundromat has an “O” in it which is contrary to how I say it — “laundry mat.” Next, the machines there have come a long way since I was kid. They have timers on the washers now, which is awesome, and the dryers are very efficient. I…
Why we use private money lenders What I’m about to tell you may come as a shock, but I have only applied for a mortgage through a bank one time in my life… and I was denied. To make that fact more interesting, you should know that it happened in February of 2020. I have to tell you I was little surprised myself. It happened as Ashley and…
A good property management system I have been out working on rentals a lot this past week. Contrary to what you hear about most landlords, I actually like working on our properties. The reason for this is because I get to see how our people are doing, how they are keeping the house up and if they are doing the four jobs of a tenant. And just to…
What exactly do you do? I have to confess that I’m guilty of something. I don’t do a lot of self promotion. Here is a case in point: This particular column marks the beginning of my sixth year writing this weekly article about real estate investing and then posting it to my blog. Yet I have friends and family who have no idea that I do it. I just…
Taking Ownership Well, I got some not-so-great news yesterday. It happened on a pretty big rehab we have going over in Calhoun. And by big, I’m talking about a complete gut job. This house had a condemned sticker on it when we bought it, if that gives you any inclination as to its condition. But after some inspection and planning, we were able to get the building inspector’s…
A great reason to have assets I was talking with a friend recently who was going through a tough time. You see, my friend had had some medical complications that had caused her to have multiple surgeries over the past few years. (By multiple I mean 10 plus.) To make a long story short, every time the surgeon would go in to fix the problem, it weakened the adjacent…
Creative offers Ashley and I were two broke kids straight out of college when we got started in real estate investing. We had a mound of student loan debt and no money in our pockets to invest. And because we had either been self-employed or full-time students while in school, we had no real, verifiable income. That fact, coupled with a high debt to income ratio from the loans,…
An investor needs a blue pen Ashley and I have been blessed to have had some of the best real estate investor teachers in the world. What differentiated guys like Jack Miller, Peter Fortunato, Dyches Boddiford and David Tilney, along with their seminars, from others was they were not in the seminar business. What I mean by that is I’ve been to classes before that are a sell-a-thon…