Give To The IRS What is Due To The IRS – Paying Taxes for Your Rental Income Property

Letting go of 25 to 35 percent of your income to tax is often a painful but compulsory thing to do. You would think of the things you could have bought with the said amount: renovate your multi-door apartment, go on a family vacation, finance another investment, or whatever it is that you want to spend on. However, the tough reality remains that we have to pay the IRS their share but there are many ways to minimize that tax burden. Check back soon for info on how to minimize your rental income tax burden.  So to deal with reality, let us abide by the law and file our income taxes so that our friends from the IRS will not haunt… Read the rest

Are you walking on eggshells when wooing delinquent tenants to settle their dues lest they might vandalize your rental property? Are you hesitant to acquire and rent out low-cost rental units because you worry about managing problem tenants that commonly rent such houses? You may want to consider taking in Section 8 tenants.

What Are Section 8 Tenants?

These are low-income families who qualify to avail of the Section 8 housing assistance provided by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. They are given Section 8 vouchers as tokens to their entitlement to such subsidy. Many of these Section 8 Tenants are single mothers with children while a handful of them are grandmothers with grandchildren.

Why Accommodate Section 8 Tenants?

… Read the rest

Do not become a landlord or fix and flip real estate investor without the appropriate reserve funds.

Without the appropriate reserve funds you will most likely be adding to our economy’s foreclosure backlog and just become another statistic. Take this advice seriously, it has been learned the hard way by many investors that have come before you. Refer to Murphy’s Law.

The Perfect Rehab?

How many rehab projects have you heard of that have had no hiccups, no delays, and no surprises?  Ask this to a group of real estate investors at your local REI club and you’ll quickly find out that the perfect rehab or long term rental doesn’t exist.  From surprise foundation problems to the guaranteed buyer/tenant that all of sudden cannot close on the deal; surprises are a part of this business.

Property Rehab Gone Wild

Even… Read the rest

The landlord was planning on raising the rents on his properties in order to offset his additional costs, until he discovered that his county allows for tenants to claim the homestead exemption. The homestead exemption reduces the assessed value of a property, which in turn lowers the property taxes. So instead of raising the tenant’s rents, he worked with them to have them claim the homestead exemption, which in turn would maintain his cash flows.

Here’s a story to help give your mind a break from placing offers, negotiating short sales, and calculating cash flows.

A landlord with a bizarre foot fetish who targeted his tenants by trying to suck their toes and acting indecently in front of them has been given a 18-month prison sentence after being found guilty of a number of sexual assaults.

Can you imagine going in front of a judge and asking to break the lease because the landlord would not stop sucking on your toes?  This world is filled with some crazy people.  I bet the tenant could have negotiated a rent reduction at least.  I’ll let the bank rep suck on my toes if they reduce my mortgage by 50%!

Read the story here.

http://goo.gl/XdBXR

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Landlords: Are You Aggressive Enough In Trying to Rent

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Nothing Fancy – Just Another REO Purchase

This home was a standard REO home listed for $55,000.  We originally offered $35K and came to a final compromise of $38K with the bank.  Once again, our offer was accepted over other higher offers solely on the basis that ours was a non-contingent cash offer.

This is the 10th property added to our rental portfolio all of which are in the same neighborhood.  This property was purchased with all cash in order to keep things simple and provide leverage for our offer.  Based on the 50% LTV after repairs on this property and the large equity positions in our other properties, our commercial lender allowed us to cash-out 100% of the purchase price and and provided us 100% of the repair funds for our latest project.  So at the end of the… Read the rest

Over the past year, I have talked with several investors down on their luck because of the real estate market crash.  Everyone seems to have the same story, “I didn’t see this coming”.  More accurately put, I would say that most of us had our blinders on and tried to enjoy this gravy train as long as we could.  So what does an investor do to get through this downturn?

Banks are Approving Loan Modifications for Investors

Bank of America (Countrywide), Harris Bank, and local community banks are some of the banks that we have first hand experience with in successfully modifying the loans on rental properties.  Surprisingly, contrary to all the news you here about how difficult this process is, all the loan modifications we have done have been fairly easy!

Here are some of… Read the rest