The Successful Landlord Blog

Last month, while having lunch with an old friend, we had a discussion about the merits of buying condo units as a real estate rental investment. Having been a condo owner in the past, I can positively say that I will never do that again.

This subject could easily fill a book, so here are my reasons in bullet-point form:

• Too many complaints from neighbors. Tenants usually only sign a year lease so if they annoy their neighbors, they can simply move. The neighbors then transfer their frustration and annoyance to the landlord.
• Condo Associations. If you like to invest by committee, condos are for you. Don’t want to afford that fat assessment to resurface the parking lot right now? Too bad. Pay up.
• Condo Commandos. These people are usually retired and have nothing to do all day. Nothing, except get all up in your business that is. They feel that you as a landlord are devaluing their property by renting your unit and they won’t let you forget it. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a guest post by the Calgary mortgage specialists at the Purcell Mortgage Team.  For mortgage related tips and tricks, check out their weekly-updated mortgage blog.

The real estate market has had its ups and downs, with the end result being plummeting rents and massive foreclosure rates.  For the savvy investor, this also means sweet deals on respectable properties.  This, of course, leads us to the question of the hour: should you pay off the mortgage(s) on your rental properties, or do you leverage the equity you’ve built in them to purchase new ones?

Understandably, it’s a tough call.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the past, when a person stopped making payments on their home, it generally took 3 months before they were foreclosed upon by the bank and evicted from the property.

These days, as any real estate agent will tell you, it could take the better part of a year for the process to come to a close. In the past I have made posts detailing some of the completely unprofessional behavior exhibited by the banks during the “short sale” process.

For the uninitiated, a “short sale” is when the bank agrees to discount the loan amount due on a property usually due to some financial hardship on the part of the borrower. Whereas, a foreclosure is when the bank takes possession of a property and evicts the previous owner with the intention of selling it at market price to re-coup its losses. Read the rest of this entry »

First off I’d like to wish everyone a Happy New Year for 2009. May it be the economic turnaround year that we’re all looking out for.

So the other day as I was preparing the spreadsheet I use to track income and expenses for my rental properties in 2009. After finishing that task, I had a chance to look back at the spreadsheet for 2008 and noticed a few things.

• The constant expenses incurred by the properties (property tax & insurance) are lower than they were last year. This is a good thing since rents are ridiculously low due to the downward pressure exerted by a glut of housing units available for rent. Read the rest of this entry »