20 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

Ever try to imagine how complex life is without any internet and only being able to use your cell phone for texting in 2023? It would be one thing if she was an average retiree with just a condo. But now run a business that way. There was a stack of phone books sitting out at the PO the other day and she rejoiced because her last one was 8 years old.

 

There are places still using all-paper records, like towing companies.  My last company used to sell a lot of manilla tags [https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-1474PE/Manila-Shipping-Tags/Manila-Shipping-Tags-1-2-3-4-x-1-3-8-Pre-Tied-Elastic?pricode=WB0469&gadtype=pla&id=S-1474PE&gclid=CjwKCAjwuqiiBhBtEiwATgvixAi_ljxDSW23GWDcI1Yj5n3-6DH9lIoVCHGO_GPcxpun480aDbfR1xoC7hwQAvD_BwE] for all of the places that still don't bar code their inventory. 

 

29 minutes ago, Cleburger said:

I have 2 rental properties.  One pays via Venmo, the other via Zelle.   Greatest things ever.  

 

I use Zillow Rentals.  It takes at least five business days for the rent to settle, but otherwise it's great.  They use your data, of course.  They suggest rent based on all of the other area properties that use Zillow Rentals.  

 

 

 

8 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

I use Zillow Rentals.  It takes at least five business days for the rent to settle, but otherwise it's great.  They use your data, of course.  They suggest rent based on all of the other area properties that use Zillow Rentals.  

 

I used Zillow rentals to advertise and show my place in Highland Square in Akron, but not for payments. 

Overall it was a good experience, other than I think it attracted a lot of "tourists" who had no intention of paying what I was asking for rent and just wanted to kill a few hours on a Saturday. 

 

Walker hosts Columbus Urban Living Tours to appease that demographic. Helps get them all out of the way at once.

17 minutes ago, Cleburger said:

 Overall it was a good experience, other than I think it attracted a lot of "tourists" who had no intention of paying what I was asking for rent and just wanted to kill a few hours on a Saturday. 

 

 

I couldn't believe the people who responded to the Zillow listing I posted.  The rental is in the middle of a student neighborhood.  Everyone knows this, so I assumed that I'd only attract interest from college students or maybe some recent graduates.  Instead, I was swarmed by single moms, many of them oddly looking to move to Ohio from Indiana or Kentucky.  I don't know exactly how they planned to scam me, but I knew damn well they were plotting something.  

 

 

 

You can ask "So what do you think of Cincinnati public schools?" 

53 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

 

I couldn't believe the people who responded to the Zillow listing I posted.  The rental is in the middle of a student neighborhood.  Everyone knows this, so I assumed that I'd only attract interest from college students or maybe some recent graduates.  Instead, I was swarmed by single moms, many of them oddly looking to move to Ohio from Indiana or Kentucky.  I don't know exactly how they planned to scam me, but I knew damn well they were plotting something.  

 

 

 

I once looked at a place in Mt. Washington which was a haven for single divorced dads who used to live in Anderson Twp that needed to be near their kids I could not believe the concentration of divorced fathers who had good jobs that wanted to live there, but then again, they say divorce is a quick way to the poor house for a lot of people. 

Let me tell you how many ol' fixer-uppers divorced dad tenants bring home in hopes of having quality time with their boys.

When I was broke and renting, a guy who was about 50 lived in the basement (not the basement apartment because there wasn't one - just...the basement).  Once his son came over to visit him.  Imagine being 10 years old and your dad is living...in a basement.  Next to the coin washer and dryer.  

Well this is interesting...the tenants wrestled a 400lb Hammond B-3 organ & Leslie cabinet into the basement.  So if these guys disappear I might become the owner of these relics:

26 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

Well this is interesting...the tenants wrestled a 400lb Hammond B-3 organ & Leslie cabinet into the basement.  So if these guys disappear I might become the owner of these relics:

Are they holding church services down there or something?

An antique shop that used to be in Portsmouth said they sold a Hammond organ 3 times for $50 and the people would never pick it up. I told a couple buddies about it and they went over there and bought it ironically then never picked it up.

3 hours ago, Lazarus said:

Well this is interesting...the tenants wrestled a 400lb Hammond B-3 organ & Leslie cabinet into the basement.  So if these guys disappear I might become the owner of these relics:

Let me know if they do...I might take if off your hands. 

6 hours ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

Are they holding church services down there or something?

 

Deep Purple tribute band, perhaps?

I'd also consider doing some "Child in Time" on that setup but wouldn't want to keep it around. 

8 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

An antique shop that used to be in Portsmouth said they sold a Hammond organ 3 times for $50 and the people would never pick it up. I told a couple buddies about it and they went over there and bought it ironically then never picked it up.

 

I saw Dr. Lonnie Smith play at the Greenwich Tavern in Cincinnati in the 90s.  It was the first time I saw a jazz group without a bass player.  With a top organ player, you don't need or even want one.  Ironically, Bootsy Collins was sitting one table behind us. 

 

 

 

Not good:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-housing-bust-comes-for-thousands-of-small-time-investors-3934beb3

 

 

 

Everybody makes fun of Dave Ramsey for owning his rental properties outright (no leverage, no debt) but he's going to be one of the guys with cash who will be able to scoop these complexes out of foreclosure.  

 

 

 

17 hours ago, Lazarus said:

Not good:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-housing-bust-comes-for-thousands-of-small-time-investors-3934beb3

 

 

 

Everybody makes fun of Dave Ramsey for owning his rental properties outright (no leverage, no debt) but he's going to be one of the guys with cash who will be able to scoop these complexes out of foreclosure.  

But if he carried some debt, especially with fixed rate loans, he’d potentially have WAY more cash to invest in foreclosed properties. 
 

Running a business with zero debt is generally a bad idea. Too much debt is very risky, but pretending zero debt is ideal completely ignores opportunity cost. 
 

That said, I have a cousin who has about 8 rental properties that he owns outright and no loans. I thought that was strange, so I asked why. For him, the rentals are how he invests his business profits. Getting loans adds a layer of complexity that would require his time. He wants all his working time to go into his primary business (which he owns). From my perspective, that seemed like a good reason to avoid the loans.

9 minutes ago, Boomerang_Brian said:

But if he carried some debt, especially with fixed rate loans, he’d potentially have WAY more cash to invest in foreclosed properties. 
 

Running a business with zero debt is generally a bad idea. Too much debt is very risky, but pretending zero debt is ideal completely ignores opportunity cost. 
 

That said, I have a cousin who has about 8 rental properties that he owns outright and no loans. I thought that was strange, so I asked why. For him, the rentals are how he invests his business profits. Getting loans adds a layer of complexity that would require his time. He wants all his working time to go into his primary business (which he owns). From my perspective, that seemed like a good reason to avoid the loans.

 

 

The problem with using cash-out refinances to expand is that it all has to go perfectly.  You might be able to absorb one problem but if two or more converge in a short time-span, the whole thing collapses.   It's kind of like running a bank - 99.9% of the time, standard practices will work, but when odd circumstances appear, the once-mighty bank dissolves in a matter of weeks.  We just saw that happen with numerous bank runs caused by an unprecedented set of circumstances.  

 

The recent run-up was so dramatic that it allowed a lot of people to pull this off, but I doubt that even half of them have sufficient cash reserves to handle many months or years of diminished revenues if we start seeing mass layoffs.  

 

 

 

Sorry, I could not find a link on youtube to this video, but it's worth watching:

https://fb.watch/m7K8sQpPqe/

 

The guest talks about managing section 8 units in Oakland, CA.  

I was just contacted by my tenants letting me know that lost luggage from a British Airways flight was dropped off on the porch.  Now it's super-duper lost. 

From a recent Fortune:

 

https://fortune.com/2023/10/19/single-family-rentals-superstar-investment-top-ten-markets-to-buy/

 

Top 10 yielding markets for single-family rentals

 

CHART SHOWS THE TOP 10 CITIES FOR SINGLE-FAMILY RENTALS

 

Metro                          Gross yield              Rent-to-list ratio

ROCHESTER, NY        11.7%                       0.19

HARTFORD, CT           8.6%                        0.15

BUFFALO, NY               8.0%                       0.13

PITTSBURGH, PA         8.0%                       0.50

CLEVELAND, OH          7.8%                       0.30

CINCINNATI, OH          7.6%                        0.26

NEW ORLEANS, LA      7.5%                        0.46

CHICAGO, IL                 7.4%                        0.25

DETROIT, MI                 7.0%                        0.33

HOUSTON, TX              7.0%                        0.70

 

The rent-to-list ratio is the number of rentals divided by the number of for-sale properties in a market.

14 hours ago, Dougal said:

From a recent Fortune:

 

https://fortune.com/2023/10/19/single-family-rentals-superstar-investment-top-ten-markets-to-buy/

 

Top 10 yielding markets for single-family rentals

 

 

The cap rate in the lower-cost cities tends to be higher, or at least ought to be higher, if you hope to make money.  For decades, landlords in Ohio's cities expected to sell the property for less than what they paid to buy it. 

 

 

Another big factor favoring renting, or using cash to buy homes you can rent out.

 

https://x.com/bobbyfijan/status/1734220367101653286?s=20

 

How do we protect landlords against being deceived and gouged by contractors?

6 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

How do we protect landlords against being deceived and gouged by contractors?

Fortunately, state law prohibits Meeka Owens from being able to indulge in her worst impulses. She had a ridiculous 10 point tenant bill of rights she wanted to pass that contained things like rent control and just cause evictions, but the legal department pretty much told her that the vast majority were non-starters under Ohio law. The most likely thing she is trying to push for is guaranteed attorneys for tenants facing eviction (which is still very problematic and will slow the process down significantly) but even if they pass that, they have no way to fund it so even that is likely to go no where. 

 

If they really want to protect tenants, they can start by repealing PG Sittenfeld's security deposit insurance bill which does more to harm working class tenants than actually help them.

15 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

How do we protect landlords against being deceived and gouged by contractors?

 

There are no protections for B2B transactions outside of litigation. 

PG turned out to be a corporate bootlicker DINO. No wonder he raised so much money so easily. 

1 hour ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

The most likely thing she is trying to push for is guaranteed attorneys for tenants facing eviction (which is still very problematic and will slow the process down significantly) but even if they pass that, they have no way to fund it so even that is likely to go no where.

 

People really want to believe that landlords want to evict tenants and that every eviction is motivated by landlord greed.  If a landlord wants to raise the rent, they just wait a few months to renew the lease.  A landlord not offering a renewal is not an "eviction". 

 

 

1 hour ago, GCrites said:

 

There are no protections for B2B transactions outside of litigation. 

 

I was deceived by a plumber in early 2023.  He wanted to charge me $12,000+ to remove and replace the house's lead service pipe.  I remarked that I thought that I heard that the waterworks does this for free.  He said that he hadn't heard about that.  I called the waterworks and they replaced my lead service pipe for free. 

 

 

 

38 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

If a landlord wants to raise the rent, they just wait a few months to renew the lease.  A landlord not offering a renewal is not an "eviction". 

That is how the housing advocates manipulate the language to act like a lease termination is the same as an eviction. It is only an eviction if the tenant refuses to move. The problem is that many housing advocates act as if the tenants have a superior right to the property than the landlord who actually owns the property. It turns property rights upside down.  Cities like Seattle have rules in addition to rent control that prevent evictions in the winter months. This means that someone can go 6 months without paying rent. If they start paying in the spring and get on a payment plan, they cant be evicted and the landlord cannot raise rent or terminate the lease for any reason as long as they are paying something.

19 hours ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

That is how the housing advocates manipulate the language to act like a lease termination is the same as an eviction. It is only an eviction if the tenant refuses to move. The problem is that many housing advocates act as if the tenants have a superior right to the property than the landlord who actually owns the property. It turns property rights upside down.

 

 

Nobody who owns property is going to pretend that there is no such thing as a bad landlord, yet housing advocates act like there is no such thing as a bad tenant. 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Lazarus said:

 

 

Nobody who owns property is going to pretend that there is no such thing as a bad landlord, yet housing advocates act like there is no such thing as a bad tenant. 

 

 

 

There are many landlords who recognize and will call out a bad landlord as a few bad apples give everyone a bad name. Groups like the apartment association hold their members to a certain standard and level or else they will kick out bad landlords. That is why Vinebrook was kicked out of that group

Edited December 19, 20231 yr by Brutus_buckeye

26 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

Nobody who owns property is going to pretend that there is no such thing as a bad landlord, yet housing advocates act like there is no such thing as a bad tenant. 

 

10 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

I disagree. There are many landlords who recognize and will call out a bad landlord as a few bad apples give everyone a bad name. Groups like the apartment association hold their members to a certain standard and level or else they will kick out bad landlords. That is why Vinebrook was kicked out of that group

You are so used to disagreeing with people that even when you agree with someone you start by saying “I disagree”. 

41 minutes ago, Boomerang_Brian said:

 

You are so used to disagreeing with people that even when you agree with someone you start by saying “I disagree”. 

 

Edited December 19, 20231 yr by Brutus_buckeye

2 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

He was saying that neither landlords and tenants can admit that there are bad players I am saying that yes, many landlords do police each other. 

 

Maybe after you were called out, you should've re-read his post to make sure you understood his point.

2 minutes ago, ryanlammi said:

 

Maybe after you were called out, you should've re-read his post to make sure you understood his point.

Point taken

Hi all--have any landlords on here ever used a broker to rent out their property?  Just looking for some experiential feedback as I am weighing on using one for the first time.  I just don't have time to manage showing and screening prospective tenants.    Any recommendations?