Our last two rental properties have been working like clockwork.  Before we started renting anything I was scared of it, how do I find a tenant?  How do I do all the paperwork correctly?  Now we are ten deep and have figured out how to get the properties full.

House #28

We closed our purchase escrow on 12/23/2009.  I still don’t have the numbers back, but I think we did about a $15,000 remodel on the property.  On 1/29/2010 we did the most form of rental property advertising, two signs in the yard and one in the front window.  And last Friday 2/5/2010 I moved highly qualified family in. That is a 44 day turn-around, from purchase to becoming tenant occupied, with a pretty big sized remodel!

House #31

We ended up rushing the repair of this one because we had someone we thought would want to move in real quick.  We closed escrow 1/12/2010, did a quick $12,000 remodel.  Signs went up the same time as House #28 on 1/29.  The original person I thought would move-in ended up passing, but we got tons of phone calls, we even took the signs down early.  We took the most qualified applicant and we signed lease paperwork yesterday.  Since we still have punch list of about 10 items left to finish, I started the lease on the 9th, but let them move-in yesterday.  This one is a 28 day turn-around!

I’ve been promising I would post more, but just have not had the energy or anything real exciting to write about.  We have got some properties, I will quickly write about.  But generally speaking, I am busy trying to buy more, get everything rented out and run the other business ventures I have on my plate right now.  Definitely a very busy time for me, but everything is going well.

House #28 – This house is not in the best neighborhood at all.  We got a decent deal on it, will make a good rental and cash-flow.  One of our network agents called me on this property and we got it right at the list price.  It needs some minor repairs.  It is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house that is 1,000 sq feet.  We are just painting the inside right now, so it should be done shortly.  As I mentioned earlier this property is in a different city than our farm, so we have tossed around the idea of selling it, but we are still unsure of what the best plan of action is.

House #29 – This house is a first for us.  The first house we bought from a wholesaler.  It is a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house and just over 2,000 sq ft in a really nice area.  The wholesaler who sold us this property has a retail buyer lined up already, but they do not have the funds to bring to hold it 30-45 days to wait for their buyer to get approved for a conventional loan.  So ideally, the hold-time on this property should be under 45 days and we should see a nice 15-20% return.  This house is being sold completely as-is, so no repairs will be done.  We are working with a partner to bring in some of the funds, so this deal is not 100% ours.

House #30 – No pictures yet, but this is going to be a great rental property.  It is a 3 and 2, on a small lot, built in 1985.   No HOA fees.  I do not know how we got this property at such a great price.  My guess is, we put it under contract between Christmas and New Years and many investors took that time off from looking at property.  As you can tell, I am excited about this one, I wish all our rental inventory could look like this!

House #31 – This house is going to be another rental.  This house is cheap, but the neighborhood is just so-so.  We are going to keep the rent cheap and should be able to get a good tenant pretty quick.  It needs very few repairs.  This house is on the same street as House #22 (actually less than a block away).  No pictures yet.  We are actually set to close on Tuesday, so I should probably get out there and take some pictures!

As for the sales:

House #17 – Loan docs are drawn and we should close this week.  The buyer’s agent has turned about to be very in-experienced which has made more work for me, which is frustrating.  I am thinking this is her first deal (she is asking how utility companies switch owners, so they don’t have to pay my bills).

House #18 – We had to do some minor repairs to the roof, we should get loan docs on Tuesday and close by Friday.  I am more comfortable with the people in this transaction, everything has been going pretty smooth so far.

So I write a post like the one last week (Goal: Get a House By the End of the Week) and proceed to disappear for a week.  You’d think I was so ashamed to face the couple readers I have to this blog, that I went into hiding until I got one.  Sounds good, but I ended up having a couple friends call and say they where in town and I proceeded to take four or five days off, we spent the weekend in San Diego and got a break from Real Estate.

After a rough start to the challenge, the house I thought was a sealed deal fell through, my agent called and said we ended up missing it by $300.  Our offer had a bigger earnest money deposit, no termite, etc, but the asset manager decided to go with the other offer.  It really sucked, because it was a great house, but the asset manager pulled some funky crap, so we drew our line in the sand and did not budge our offer.  Our strategy clearly didn’t work.

Fast-forward to earlier in the week and one of my top agents called and asked us to look at his latest listing.  It is not in my favorite neighborhood, maybe a C+.  Smaller house at 965 sq feet, but is 3 bedroom 2 bath with a decent layout.  So we put in an offer and after some countering and us paying about $2,000 more then we wanted to we got a signed contract today.  Let’s face it, this market is just really tough to be an investor in.  Prices are so low and people are willing to pay a lot for the low end properties, so pretty much everything goes over asking price.

The agent said closing is lined up for 12/24 or sooner, so we will for sure close 2 this month.  We haven’t decided if we want to wholesale this one or add it to the rental pool.  It’s about 20 miles from most of our other houses so we’d prefer to get rid of it, but we want to keep our rental pool moving forward.

House #26 is almost ready to hit the MLS.  I’m excited to see what kind of action we get on it!

That’s all for today!