Out-of-state investing is a great option if you’re looking to venture beyond your backyard, but finding the perfect market can be a challenge. Not to worry—our hosts have been in your shoes before and are here to help you navigate this big decision!
Welcome back to another Rookie Reply! In this episode, Tony and Ashley offer their best tips, tricks, and tools for choosing a real estate market. They also get into the nitty-gritty of the mortgage pre-approval process. What is a pre-approval, when should you get one, and does it affect your credit score? Stay tuned to find out! Next, they discuss holding costs, including some of the different ways to fund these expenses. Finally, they talk about security cameras, and Tony even shares two instances when they helped save the day on his properties!
If you want Ashley and Tony to answer a real estate question, you can submit a question here, post in the Real Estate Rookie Facebook Group, or call us at the Rookie Request Line (1-888-5-ROOKIE).
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Read the Transcript Here
Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie episode 358. My name is Ashley Kehr and I am here with my co-host, Tony J. Robinson.
Tony:
And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast where every week, twice a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. And as always, we’ve got a lot of good questions for today’s Rookie Reply episode. We’re going to talk about the best time to get pre-approved, and I guess what a pre-approval is and why you need it. We’ll talk a little bit about how to calculate the holding costs on your loan and what are holding costs and why are they important.
Ashley:
So we’re going to talk about out of state investing and some tools and resources that you guys can use to become the best out-of-state real estate investor or even in state investing. These skills are definitely transferable. And then lastly, we’re going to be talking about security cameras. Tony, do you have any security cameras in your rentals? Well, not in them probably, but outside.
Tony:
Yeah, so we have security cameras at every single property of ours. There isn’t a single one that we have that doesn’t have a security camera, some have multiple. And they’ve definitely saved our butts a few times, both in getting guests to leave and making sure that the guests were staying safe. So yeah, we’ve got a lot of stories about cameras within the short-term rental business.
Ashley:
Okay, well, when we get to that question, I want to hear at least one of them. You got a good juicy one you could tell me of where maybe the security camera saved you. Okay, so let’s get into our first question. Our first one is from Caleb Mervar. Best time to get pre-approved. I’m thinking that I’ll be trying to purchase and house hack. I’m wondering when the right time would be to get pre-approved. Should I wait until I have my down payment? Should I not wait at all? Should my credit be above a certain score? Thanks guys.
I think the first thing he needs to do is talk to a loan officer and tell him what his current situation is and maybe they actually have a loan product that would actually be applicable where he could go and he could apply for a loan right now. So to house hack, normally you go and purchase an investment property or you get a conventional loan, it’s 20% down, but there are different loan products where you could put three and a half percent down like an FHA loan, or even now there are conventional loans, especially for multifamily, where you only have to put down 5%.
So I think the biggest first step is going to talk to a lender. Then also asking what their credit requirements are, because sometimes you can get a pre-approved for a loan, but if you have a lower credit, you’re not going to get the best interest rate that they can give you. So maybe ask them what that threshold is and if you are close to having that credit score, me personally, I would wait it out a little. If it’s a couple months, you’re building up your credit to get that better interest rate on something you’re probably going to be paying interest on for the next 30 years if you’re getting a 30-year fixed rate loan. So Tony, do you ever go or have you ever went and got pre-approved before you were actually ready to purchase a property?
Tony:
Yeah, so I mean, I think first just quickly defining what it means to get pre-approved. So if you’ve ever applied for a mortgage before then you know that it’s almost like, I don’t know, getting the top level security clearance, like all the documents you have to provide to get approved for a mortgage. So the pre-approval is a step before that. So it’s just a lender taking a really quick glance at your personal situation and giving you a pretty good ballpark on what you might be able to get approved for in terms of purchase price. Now, this isn’t a final approval. There’s still a lot of supporting documentation you have to give your lender, which when you actually find your property, you’ll go through that process. But this is the first step just to give you that shot across the bow to know what you might be able to purchase.
Now, gosh, I haven’t gotten pre-approved since I don’t even remember when maybe, gosh, 2020 was the last time that I think I had to go out and get a pre-approval for something. So it’s been a while. But I think for me, whenever I think about buying an investment property, whether you’re house hacking or it’s a standalone investment property, to me the first step is always understanding your purchasing power, understanding your purchasing power. And your purchasing power is really two things. It’s the amount of capital you currently have access to, so how much cash do you have in the bank or how much cash can you get from a partner or friend, whoever? And then what is your loan approval amount?
So if you went to a bank, what kind of loan could you get? Because if you only have one piece, it’s an incomplete picture because say, you know okay, cool, I’ve got 20,000 bucks in the bank, but you don’t know how much you can get approved for. You can’t really go out there and start analyzing deals because you don’t know if you should be looking at $200,000 homes or if you can look at $500,000 homes.
So to me, I would get pre-approved early on, just at least get a gauge on, hey, where do I currently stand? And say that your preapproval is maybe lower than you want, at least your loan officer at that point can tell you, “Okay, hey, I need to see X, Y, and Z, and once that happens and we can bump your approval up to this higher amount.” So me, pre-approval, you can get that back in a day or two, I’d get that early to at least give myself that foundation and then from there, make the decision on what properties I should be looking at.
Ashley:
I think the last thing I would add to that is make sure that you’re reaching out to more than one lender too. Try your small local banks and they’ll have different loan products too, and they’ll also be able to advise you as to when is the best time for you to actually have your credit run based on what you’re able to tell them. You can sign up for creditkarma.com and you’re not going to know exactly what your credit score is, but you can monitor it that way, but also you are eligible to pull your own credit. I think it’s once a year if you actually go to… Do you know the website at all, Tony? I think if you-
Tony:
I don’t, it’s like annual free credit report.org or something crazy that, don’t go that website. I don’t know if that’s a website.
Ashley:
Make sure it’s a .org or .gov though that you’re going to, and it’s not a .com and then you actually end up pulling your own credit and getting an alert.
Tony:
Yeah.
Ashley:
I have to be completely honest, this happened to be one time where it was when I only had a couple of rental properties. I remember I went to Target and my credit card was denied and I was so embarrassed, I was mortified. I was like, “What is happening?” I couldn’t see anything in my credit card portal and I was like, “Oh my God, somebody’s taking out all this debt and my name and everything.” And they put a stop on me using any credit, and I go and I pull my credit because I had my rental properties. So I filled out an application, I was renting one of my properties and ran credit on myself because I didn’t know how else to find out what my credit was.
And so I got a ding on my credit because here I am running it, credit on myself just to see do I have all these credit cards maxed out the day or whatever it was, and I can’t remember the reason, but eventually I called Chase or whatever the bank was, and it might’ve even been my debit card at the time. I don’t know. But it was just something silly that had happened, but it was so awful. But I made the mistake. That was a mistake that I did was running my own credit when there are free websites, you can go to the government one and get it run once a year to have it very accurate, or you can just continuously monitor it on different websites too.
Tony:
Yeah. And a lot of banks now offer it for free too, like Chase and Bank of America and a lot of those big banks give you that option.
Ashley:
And we are going to get back after the short break from our show sponsors.
Tony:
But something you mentioned, Ashley, that I just want to highlight was going to multiple lenders. I think a lot of new investors do make the mistake of just going to one person and just taking that one person’s word is like the gospel. But the more lenders you can talk to, the more exposure you get to other loan products. And believe it or not, like most businesses, different businesses have different products or different businesses specialize in different things. So if you want a house hack, I would really encourage you to work with a lender that understands and knows house hacking. And if you want to buy an Airbnb, focus on someone, a lender that really knows the Airbnb space, if you want to fix and flip focus on a lender that really knows the kind of construction loan in the fix and flip space. So when you’re talking to some of these lenders, just ask them like, “Hey, what percentage of your last 100 loans were people buying a house hack?”
And if they’re like, “Yeah, maybe one or two.” Then maybe look for another lender that’s like, “Oh dude, 70% of what I do is all real estate investors doing house hacks.” And now you’ve got some that really understands that asset class, that niche, and can give you the best guidance to get you into the right loan product. I’ve seen so many times where people are in a position to get better debt, but because they didn’t talk to enough people, they ended up settling for debt that’s more expensive, that maybe wasn’t the right debt for them. And it wasn’t a lender being mean or trying to point them in the wrong direction, it’s just some lenders only have knowledge of certain loan products. So all that to say, find a lender that knows your asset class, that understands that niche, so it specializes in that and that’ll give you a better chance of getting the right loan product.
Ashley:
Our next question is from Jayden Villa. Are the holding costs something you calculate in your loans if you use hard or private money, or is that something that comes out of your own pocket? Well, this really depends on the lender as to what they’re going to provide for you because some lenders, like mostly a conventional bank loan is just going to say, “We’re only going to loan you 80% of the purchase price. And that doesn’t include any holding cost to rehab it or anything like that.” But you could negotiate for private money and sometimes hard moneylenders that will actually give you money for the rehab cost portion of it.
As far as specifically allocating money towards holding costs, I’ve never dealt with a bank that said, “We’re actually going to give you 90% of the purchase price, another $20,000 to rehab because that’s what your rehab estimate is and then also $10,000 for the holding costs,” which is basically to pay back your interest to me and also pay for the utilities, the insurance, the grass cut, things like that. So Tony, in your experience, have you ever dealt with anyone who actually covered the holding costs for you? I think the best bet is probably a private moneylender that says, “You don’t have to pay interest on this loan until the loan is actually due and you’re just going to pay me the interest and the principal at once,” and you still have your utilities, insurance, things like that too.
Tony:
That’s been our experience. So yeah, I’ve never found a bank that’ll kind of give you money for holding costs. But when we do our flips, we’re typically using private money, and when we use private money, we raise the entire project cost. We raise the entire project cost. That’s our purchase price, that’s our rehab and that does include things like holding costs, so our insurance payments, keeping the utilities on. We typically have a balloon payment at the end for interest so we’re not making monthly interest payments, but we do roll in those minor holding costs that we do have into that private money note. So it works better when you’re dealing with individuals. Hard moneylenders, probably maybe not, I don’t know, I haven’t done a lot of hard money, so I can’t say for sure. Definitely not if you’re going to a Bank of America or Wells Fargo or some kind of local credit union to get construction debt, they’re probably going to want you to cover those holding costs out of pocket.
Ashley:
Yeah. With the hard moneylender, when I did it, and even when they gave you money for rehab, you have to show every single receipt. If you paid the contractor, if you ended up buying materials, you had have to submit those to show that those were used for the rehab. You couldn’t just take the $20,000 they were giving you for the rehab and spend it on whatever. You had to show proof that the money you spent. And that too was actually, I ended up paying the contractor directly and then getting reimbursed by the hard moneylender just because it was not a smooth process with the hard moneylender I worked with, and I didn’t want the contractors waiting.
So always be cautious of situations like that where maybe you could have to put the money up front or that you are super clear with your contractor that a bank is going to be paying him directly. When I did my primary residence, we did a construction loan, every payment, we made the first payment to the contractor, and then every other payment, the contractor and the bank, they worked it out with each other. He would submit his invoice to the loan officer, the loan officer would get him paid, and we were completely out of that and not the middle man at all.
Tony:
Yeah, my first two BRRRR, which were my first two investments, that was our setup as well, where the contractor actually already had a relationship with that local credit union so every time he finished a milestone, he would just submit invoices directly to the credit union. They’d send someone out to inspect the work, and then they would release a payment directly to him. So super cool for me because A, I’m having the bank go through and validate that he’s actually doing the work. And then B, I didn’t have to worry about playing the middleman to facilitate those payments.
When we do private money, and this is why I love the private money, is that on the day of closing, we just get one big check from escrow that we then use to cover everything. So we’re covering all of our holding costs, we’re covering all of our payments to our vendors, all of our material costs, so we get all the money upfront when we go with private money.
And as opposed to what Ashley said, where you’re kind of trying to reimburse or maybe paying out of pocket first and then getting paid back, which is why I love private money so much. And guys, private money is a really, I think it’s more abundant than people realize. There’s a lot of people who have money sitting in savings accounts right now, and think about the folks that have had money in savings accounts for the last year, they’ve lost a tremendous amount of value on that money because inflation’s been so high. Now imagine if they had lent that money out to you at 10, 11, 12%, whatever it may be. Now they’re beating inflation and getting way more than what they’re going to get if they had left it inside instead of a savings account.
So for a lot of our new investors, I get that it may be difficult to even comprehend that there are folks out there that might just want to give you 100, 200, 300, 400, $500,000, but just it’s a limiting belief we got to break through, but there are people out there who have that capital that just want to give it to you. Now, granted, you’ve got to build that relationship. You’ve got to show that you’re worthy of that and kind of protect that person.
But you go out there, you make relationships, go to local meetups, host your own meetup, go to events like BP Con and network with folks and whatever you can do to meet more people that are interested in this space and then say, hey, my friend Amy Jury, who’s been on the podcast as well, says, “Do you want to make double digit returns backed by real estate?” And everyone’s like, “Okay, yeah, that sounds interesting. Tell me more.” So just start laying those seeds is what I’m saying.
Ashley:
Okay. Our next question is from Molly Allred. Question for out of state investors, what tools or methods did you use to determine where to invest? We live in a ridiculously expensive area and would like to invest out of state in an area without such a high barrier of entry. My husband and I are both from Michigan, but I don’t want to necessary limit my search only to Michigan. We live in Colorado and are currently house hacking our primary residence with a lock off. Thank you.
Well, first of all, Molly, congratulations on the house hack and let’s help you find a market out of state. Tony, what are your first thoughts? Let’s actually start with you. How did you find your first out-of-state market? Which was the beautiful-
Tony:
Shreveport, Louisiana.
Ashley:
Shreveport, Freeport, Treeport.
Tony:
If you guys are new to the Rookie podcast, my first investment was in Shreveport, Louisiana, and probably for two years, Ashley wasn’t sure what the name of that city was, and at one point it was Freeport, at another point it was Treeport.
Ashley:
Freeport, or Treeport, I think were the two that I called it.
Tony:
Yeah, so Shreveport, Louisiana, it is actually like the third or fourth-biggest city in Louisiana. So it is a decently sized city. But I guess before I talk about how I landed on that city, I’ll just say at a high level, there are typically three motivations that people have when investing in real estate. And I tack on a fourth if you’re doing short term, but there’s three motivations. There’s cashflow, there’s appreciation, and there’s tax benefits. And if you’re doing vacation rentals or you’re doing Airbnbs, the fourth one would be like, “Hey, I want to subsidize the cost of a vacation home, we’re just vacationing.” But cashflow, appreciation and tax benefits are the three big motivators for investing in real estate.
And for you as an investor, Molly, you first, before you even think about potential cities, you’ve got to rank those three motivations. And if for you, maybe number one is cashflow, that’s going to point you towards specific markets. Maybe you’re going to the Midwest, maybe you’re going to secondary and tertiary markets. If the biggest thing for you is long-term appreciation, you’re going to go to different markets. Maybe you’re coming to a place like California, maybe you’re going to a place like wherever where there’s a strong record of healthy appreciation. Same for tax benefits, if you want big tax benefits and you’re going to places where you can do cost segregations and maybe you’re buying bigger properties.
So you want to rank those motivations first because there’s 19,000 cities across the United States, and trying to whittle that list down just by looking at a list is overwhelming. So give it some framework, give it some guardrails. Start with those three motivations. I guess Ashley, for you, when you started out, how did you rank those three? Cashflow, tax benefits, appreciation.
Ashley:
Mine was 100% cashflow, I needed to pay off my student loans.
Tony:
Yeah.
Ashley:
And that’s all I did. That’s all I used that cashflow for was to pay off my student loans. And it’s definitely way more focused towards appreciation. When the market was really hot, 2021, I sold a lot of my high cash flowing duplexes that were in not great areas. They were kind of headache properties. No matter what we did, there was always something that broke in them. It was always hard to get good quality tenants in them. And so we ended up dumping those. So now I’m definitely more in tune with appreciation than just focusing on cashflow. And as much as there are great benefits tax wise for real estate investing, Dave has a dairy farm so I still have part of that dairy farm on my tax return, and that shows, that actually gives me way more tax advantages than real estate does. So I have to say tax advantages is the lowest on-
Tony:
On your list.
Ashley:
My priorities, because with farming, there are lots of tax advantages available with that too.
Tony:
Yeah. And everyone’s got to rank those differently. But similar to you, when I first started was cashflow, right? I was searching for cashflow. And for a lot of people listening, that’s probably the majority of people are going to prioritize cashflow. But you have some people, maybe say you’re a physician or you’re an attorney and you actually like the work that you do, but you’re a six figure income earner and you’re tired of paying big tax bills and maybe your biggest thing is the tax benefits. So rank those first, Molly, and I think that’ll help you dictate what cities. Once you’ve whittled that list down a little bit, right, say that your big focus is cashflow. So you’re probably going to avoid certain states, certain cities, you can’t get great cashflow there. Now you want to start going into the actual data to help support and narrow that list down even more.
And there’s two types of data that I typically look at when I’m analyzing a market. You have your quantitative data, which is hard numbers, and you have your qualitative data, which is the stuff that you can’t really necessarily see on a spreadsheet, but that you get from having conversations with people. And people oftentimes make the mistake of starting with the qualitative information and never backing that up with the quantitative piece. So for example, someone says, “I live in Michigan, so I’m going to invest in Michigan because that’s what I know,” and that’s a good starting spot. But you still want to back that idea up back, that initial hunch up with the data to support like, “Hey, can I achieve my goal by investing? Numerically, monetarily, can I achieve my goals by investing in this city?”
So what I would do, Molly, is talk to other friends you have in the real estate investing space. See where they’re investing, see who’s having success in certain markets in certain cities. What’s it called? The NASCAR, where the car in front of you, I never watch NASCAR, but I know this analogy, the car in front of you is driving fast, so they’re breaking all the wind and you’re behind them and you can just shoot out around them.
Ashley:
Shake and bake.
Tony:
Is that what it’s called? Shake and bake?
Ashley:
From Talladega Nights, shake and bake, baby.
Tony:
I’ve never never seen Talladega Nights.
Ashley:
Of course you haven’t.
Tony:
Drafting. Yeah, drafting is what it’s called. Actually, it’s so funny side story. This past Halloween, one of Sarah’s best friends, we did a trunk or treat in my neighborhood, and she showed up and she was dressed, I thought she was Wonder Bread because the colors that she had on, and then her kid was in a race car. And I was like, “What the heck are you guys?” And she’s like, yeah, “We’re from Talladega Mights.” I was like, “I’ve never seen that movie.” But anyway, so drafting, right? You’re drafting a NASCAR and the car’s in front of you, that’s doing all the hard work and you can shoot out behind them.
Same thing when you’re choosing a market. If you know someone that’s already done all the hard work of validating the city, they’ve already got successful rentals in that city, draft behind them and kind of coast off their hard work. So I like that route of getting information from folks that are already in that market, but then still back it up by doing your own analysis. Look at the crime data, look at the population, look at the job industry.
Ashley:
Verify.
Tony:
Verify it, right? And I think when you put those two things together, Ash, the qualitative and the quantitative, that’s how you get confident looking at certain markets.
Ashley:
Yeah, NeighborhoodScout and BrightInvestor, great resources to kind of compile all of that information you want to verify using websites like that instead of going and pulling all of your own data, but you’re not going to get every piece of information you want. But using those two websites can really help you to verify the information you are getting from other investors.
Tony:
So Molly, if you go inside of the BiggerPockets forums, or if you go to the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group, you’re going to see countless new rookies who are posting about their first investment. And what I want you to do, Molly, is see where those people are investing and just shoot them a message, say, “Hey Tony, I saw that you were buying in Shreveport, Louisiana. What’s your experience been? Do you plan to buy there again?” And just start reaching out to different people and getting their insights? And the beautiful thing about the rookie community is that it’s a giving community. So when you reach out to folks, there’s a good chance you’re going to get a response.
I posted my very first deal in the BiggerPockets forum when I got it, and I had a bunch of people reaching out to me about it, and I answered pretty much every single person’s question. So there are a lot of folks who are in the community that are going to be happy to share that qualitative data with you. So I’m going to challenge you, Molly, every other rookies that’s listening, see where other people are investing and just reach out to them, ask those questions.
Ashley:
Okay. Our last question is from Akasha Manthe, curious if anyone uses security cameras on the outside of the rentals. Did you happen to know if this is legal? I’m also guessing it to be accurate that you have to put this in the lease to notify the tenant the security cameras are on, however, not a replacement for tenants to use as renter’s insurance. So Tony has already yelled at me for this. At one Airbnb, I have it optional that they can flick a switch and it’ll turn the security camera on and off, and we just ask them to turn it back on before they leave. Tony, why did you tell me that I should leave it on all the time?
Tony:
So I’ll tell you an example of a story, why we made sure that our security cameras are on. We had a guest, so we have security cameras at the exteriors of the properties only, check with your local state on what the regulations are around security cameras. But we have them on the exteriors, and you actually can put them in the interiors as well, you just can’t put them in private places, bathrooms, bedrooms, et cetera. But if general common spaces like the living room, you can put them in there. We don’t have any interior cameras, only exterior. We had a guest who messaged us and said, “Hey, the hot tub area was really slippery,” because we have outdoor tile, “It was really slippery when I got out the hot tub. I slipped and fell and my back’s really hurting. I just wanted to let you know.”
We’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is kind of a big deal.” So luckily we have a security camera in the backyard, we can see the entire backyard. And we scrub her entire trip trying to see where is someone falling, getting out of the hot tub. We’re like, I don’t know hours of content, we don’t see anyone slipping and falling. And then we see someone fall. We’re like, “Oh my God, there it is.” So we slow it down, rewind it, and here’s the scene that we see. We have an outdoor dining table next to the hot tub. Our guests are having a couple drinks, having a good time, and this guest is standing up with a wine glass in her hand, takes a sip, puts the glass down on the table, goes to sit down in her chair, and she misses the chair. And that was the slip and fall that was so dangerous because of the hot tub.
So we took a screenshot of her falling. We sent that to her and it’s like, “Hey, we’re super sorry, but this is the only clip we could find of anyone falling in the backyard. Did something else happen?” And she was like, “Oh, I guess that’s what’s happened. Like, no worries.” So we like to have the security cameras there because it gives the guest protection, but B, it also protects us in case something else goes wrong.
And I’ll give you one more anecdote that proves why the cameras are so important for us. We had a break in one of our properties over the summer. A guest checked in and they’re like, “Hey, doesn’t really look like the property was cleaned. There’s some white residue on the counter. There’s some trash and stuff that’s laid around.” And we’re like, “What the heck? We know that our cleaners were there.” So we scrubbed the cameras and the property had been vacant for a day. So someone checked in on a Monday, next guest didn’t check in until Wednesday. So there’s 24 hours where no one was at the property. So we check the cameras during that 24 hour period. Lo and behold, we see someone jump the fence. They try and slide by the cameras and they end up breaking into the lockbox. And they stayed the night at the property. They stayed the night at the property.
We had to file a police report and we got the guy’s face we give to the local police authorities. But had we not had those cameras, we wouldn’t have known what happened. And because this guy broke into the lockbox, we couldn’t find the keys, we told the guests, “Hey, here’s what happened. We’re not comfortable with you staying there tonight because we don’t know if this guy’s going to come back.” So we moved that guest to a different property, recleaned the property, had it rekeyed, relocked, moved the lockbox somewhere else. But we were able to catch that because we had the cameras there to show us what happened.
Ashley:
Okay, fine. It was me. I’ve been going around staying in all your vacant properties.
Tony:
Break it into my lock boxes.
Ashley:
Bouncer, you know what I actually, I hacked into your Airbnb account so I can see your view as to what’s open-
Tony:
Which days are open.
Ashley:
And days I just go around to each one.
Tony:
So did you also leave the white residue on the counters?
Ashley:
The baby powder? Yeah, because I put it in my hair, it’s dry shampoo.
Okay, so I think, here’s a good question that I don’t even know. So this is in your short-term rentals you’re doing this, but this question is specific to long-term rentals. You’re putting it in your lease agreements. So do you know if this is legal? I don’t know for sure, but almost every single apartment complex around here has security cameras on the outside. That’s for apartment complexes. I don’t know if there’s a difference in the rule as far as it, but you obviously have to disclose that there are security cameras on the property. In the one apartment complex, there’s security cameras in the hallways too actually.
Tony:
I think the question I would ask, Akasha, is what’s your reason for wanting security cameras on a long-term rental? If they’re going to be there for 12 months, 24 months, a decade, however long, long-term tenants are typically there, what reason would you really have to even install security cameras there? On the short-term side, it makes a ton of sense because you have multiple guests coming in and out on a regular basis. But when someone’s making this their home, I don’t even know if I want to move into a place long-term where the landlord has a security camera in the back. I would want my own security camera if I’m staying there and I’m living there, not the landlord. So I think I would just question the reason, what’s the motivation behind wanting it for a long-term rental?
Ashley:
Yeah. And for the apartment complexes, we have it because there’s common areas. One of the buildings has a library in it, things like that. And actually we’re getting cameras installed on the exterior for the first time on the dumpster because we’re getting people that are dumping in the dumpster. We’re getting tenants that are throwing a couch next to the dumpster, shoving it, the dumpster’s in an enclosure, and they’ll literally shove stuff in this little tiny area between the enclosure and the dumpster. And then of course, we have to hire somebody to come and take that out. And so that is to be able to monitor common area things, that’s where we found the use for a security camera.
So if you just have a single family home or duplex, I mean, maybe if you’re having a lot of disputes with the neighbors, your tenants are constantly complaining about the neighbors or things like that, and you want to see what’s really going on is putting up a temporary camera or something. But you’d obviously have to at that point, if they’re already in their lease, most likely get permission from the tenant to do that, to kind of figure out what’s going on.
Well, that is it for our questions for today on this week’s Rookie Reply, we are curious how you guys love the new Tuesday, Thursday format. So make sure you leave us a review or you can comment on the YouTube channel. But please go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a rating and review and let us know about your latest win.
Tony:
And speaking of reviews, I want to give a shout-out to someone that just left us a five star review. And this person said, “I love this podcast because it gives me the inspiration to pursue my real estate investing dreams. There’s a good spread of expert guest and rookies telling their stories.” So again, guys, the more reviews we get, the more folks we can inspire just like this. So like Akasha, take a few minutes, leave that rating review and we definitely would appreciate them. We just might read out on the show as well.
Ashley:
Thank you guys so much for listening. I’m Ashley, and he’s Tony. And we’ll see you guys next time.
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In This Episode We Cover:
- Finding the perfect market for investing out-of-state
- When to start the pre-approval process for a new home loan
- How to pay for holding costs (and which lenders will fund them!)
- How to land the IDEAL loan for your real estate niche
- When to install security cameras across your rental properties
- And So Much More!
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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.