Financial Freedom One House At A Time
Safe, secure income “Go and get a safe and secure job with a good company with great benefits.” That was the advice my grandfather gave to my dad when he was a young man. This advice was a little strange coming from my grandfather. You see, he ran his own pharmacy and soda fountain on the west side of Atlanta. He had always provided for his family…
What does a day look like? I’m often asked what a typical day looks like for a full-time investor. This is a hard thing to answer because any given day can be different. But to give you some insight as to the possibilities, let me tell you about yesterday. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. (that’s not a typo.) The reason I get up so early is so…
Holidays, vacancies and late payees I got a call recently from someone needing advice about their landlord/ tenant relationship. This caller was the tenant, rather than the landlord. This tenant was upset that they had just received — and I quote — “a nasty letter” from their landlord. The letter said the tenant either needed to pay what was owed in full or move from the property. …
It came back to bite us Having a well-thought-out tenant screening process is essential to your success as a landlord. If you haven’t developed this plan, you should really give it some thought. Let me walk you through the major parts of our tenant selection process and then show you how not sticking to it resulted in us getting a house back in poor condition for the first…
Move-in inspections I was out doing service calls on some of our rentals yesterday. There’s a reason for that. It’s mainly that I like to handle the repairs listed on a newly installed tenants’ move-in inspection sheet. First, let me tell you about the importance of the move-in inspection process, and then, I’ll explain why I like to handle those repairs myself. During the lease-up process, which is…
Start the ball rolling Does this scenario sounds familiar? Rent is due on the first and late after the fifth. After 5p.m. on the fifth, you send a letter of demand via email and a text that says the tenant needs to pay or move from the property by the ninth. If not, you’ll have to file dispossessory at court. On the morning of the ninth you…
What can an in-home tell you? I’m sure you have all heard the horror stories of some poor landlord who took the first person with money who came along and rented to them their nice, newly renovated rental home only to have it destroyed in a matter of months, right? While that does happen, there’s something you can do as a landlord to limit and pretty much prevent…
Our first occupied sit-out We recently had to do one of the most uncomfortable things I feel like a person has to do as a landlord. It’s called a sit-out. If you don’t know what that is, a sit-out is the culmination of the dispossessory proceedings. It’s where the landlord has to go in and physically remove all of someone’s personal possessions from the interior of their property…
A big fat jacket Last week, we made an analogy between how you protected yourself from the elements as a kid when you played in the snow and how you should use that same logic to protect your assets. Both should be done in layers. We talked about layers commonly used to protect financial assets — things like corporations and how the corporate shield is a great line…
Why do an in-home interview? We have three properties on market right now for rent, and the quality and amount of applications coming in is great. This is a stark difference from the craziness we experienced in late fall of last year. Then, we had 200 applications submitted for just one property. And of those, only 20 percent were filled out completely, but most of the applicants didn’t meet…