Imagine that you take the same route to work everyday. It takes 45 minutes door-to-door. But something happens. Maybe a 6 month construction project. Now it takes 1 ½ hours door-to-door. Without skipping a beat, your mind immediately starts thinking of new routes to get to work. That’s what real estate investors should be doing,…
If your apartment units are under threat of rent control legislation, it’s helpful to notice the similarities between rent control and labor unions. There are valuable insights to gain by studying what happened to manufacturing in America when labor unions were at their strongest. In order to maintain margins and stay in business, manufacturers closed…
One of the first questions you ask yourself is, “What neighborhood should I invest in?” There are hundreds of ways to answer this question. I think it’s one of the most important questions. Maximum ROI shouldn’t be the first objective. Investing in apartment buildings is a long-term strategy for building wealth and steady spendable cash-flow….
Admittedly, he had no idea I was going to knock on his door. He had oily and uncombed hair on his balding head. His face was gaunt and sunken. He needed to shave. His t-shirt was twisted around his skinny, hunched-over torso probably from sleeping on the couch all night. I could see at least…
I would quietly sneak up to my tenant’s door and tape a 3-Day-Notices on it at 2am. Or before they came home from work. Anything to avoid confrontation. I don’t like to be around upset people and I certainly don’t like to be the cause of someone’s upset. Clearly, uncomfortable conversation was not my strength….
Water was gushing out of a rusty galvanized pipe in the garden. My tenants sounded like screeching school children as they ran through a heavy mist on their way through the front gate. Instead of spending $150 to repair the leak, I spent $6000 installing new copper pipe throughout the three unit building. I felt…
It was terrifying. No matter how experienced you are, when you purchase a new property, you can’t eliminate all the risks. Fear of the unknown. This includes all the problems you are about to inherit that the seller didn’t mention. As I mentioned in my post What Your Psychologist Knows about Becoming a Landlord, EVERY…
For the first 7 years I owned real estate, I never planned for anything except how to purchase my next property. Every time I closed escrow, I would just introduced myself to the tenants and tell them where to start sending their rent checks. If they had a complaint that a window was broken or…
We didn’t have sex that night. I was sneaking out of her parent’s house early in the morning to go sign loan docs on my first apartment building. My appointment was at 8am. Too early for a Saturday. She was seated and leaning forward in a chair with her arms folded tightly across her chest…