Property Management
I
would rather "flip" properties than to use them as rentals. Roland thought the ideal rental would be
commercial property - renting out space to doctors, specifically or manage on
office building. That is something we
have never done, but we did have two rental properties for family living. There are different ways to be in property
management.
1. Sometimes Roland would (and still does)
look at commercial properties that he could use to rent out office space or
floor space. We had actually looked at a
squirrely layout in Sandy - there were 9 different rooms I think and most
included sinks. He said it had been used
as a daycare at one time but he was thinking it might make good offices for
doctors. The appearance of the
establishment was residential, but most of the buildings around it were used
for commercial - if used at all. Unless
the doctor had clients living in that part of Sandy whose only option of
transportation was their feet, I don't think it was the most ideal location and
was in need of cosmetic repairs in order to invite the public to want to see a
doctor in that establishment.
2. We did have two different houses that we
used as rental property. The first was the
house we ended up living in when we moved to West Valley. At the time of purchase we had no intentions
of moving into it. As usual, the family
was recruited to spruce up the appearance.
I took this picture before it was ready as we working on it.
I
I took a lot more, but currently this
is all I can find. While working on it,
Biff enquired if we had any renters in mind or if he could possibly move
in. I think it was a good experience for
him to be out on his own. Sadly it
lasted only a couple of months. In
December of 2007 he was in an accident that totaled the car he needed as
transportation and as things didn't seem to be working out with his roommates,
he used it as an excuse to get out.
Our next renter was the daughter of a
ward member who needed a second chance.
If the declining economy hadn't been such an issue with the job market,
they may be living there still as Roland had contracted a lease/purchase option
in which they were actually paying more than expected rent, but the money was
to be accumulated to use as down payment for purchasing when they finally qualified. They could no longer make payments, nor could
we on our current house in Kearns. We
ended up losing our house in Kearns and moved to our West Valley Property (see here
and here)
Meanwhile we had purchased another
property in Kearns from a neighbor who was also having financial problems. He had used it as a rental for as long as we
had known him. We continued with rental,
but had not made the best of selections with our renters. The last couple we had in our Kearns rental
moved into the neighborhood about five or six months before we moved out. It was their intent to purchase the property
when the timing was right. Unfortunately
it was never right for them. They both
lost their jobs and we ended up doing a quick claim deed returning it to the
neighbor we had initially purchased it from.
3. I posted
about the trauma of getting into our rental when we first moved to Oregon. My third example of a third party property
management. You could purchase several properties but allow another a
percentage to collect rent, enforce rules and so forth. I used Neil Co as my reference as it is the
only property management that I have dealt with personally.
I had actually created a post
recommending not to use Neil Co at Century 21, but since have reverted to a
draft - though I'm still not happy with them overall, they did seem to be on
top of it when we called for maintenance issues. Getting in and out was my
major issue but I really loved the house where we live. I really thought I would miss this house after
we left, but really have not given it a second thought. That's really impressive too.
I
suppose I did have six to begin with, but as I did not go into as much detail
with those examples, I wasn't certain that I had covered six examples. Now that I see it outlined this way, I can see
where I had used at least seven in the assignment I turned in. Next post:
Gravy Investments. Aren't you
excited?
