Buy & Hold Strategy
The buy and hold strategy in real estate investing means you buy a property, rent it out and earn passive income. Obtaining passive income is means while you’re doing absolutely nothing or doing other things, your rental property is earning money every day. For all practical purposes, you are a Landlord or as we like to refer to it as a real estate business owner. While this concept sounds easy and simple, it is not. This way of investing can come with headaches along with emotional and financial stress.
In our real estate investment program, we literally take the headaches and risk away that’s normally associated with buying rental properties. In general, no one really wants to be a landlord. Being a Landlord requires patience, understanding of local ordinances, state laws, federal laws, lots of time and a little bit of craziness. We have been successful landlords for 25 years and have experienced every possible situation and scenario that occurred from being a landlord.
It is our responsibility as your Real Estate Investment Consultant to identify single family or multi-unit homes in areas that yield high rents. Furthermore, as we analyze your property we make sure that your property also has the ability to resale at later date. This is an important strategy because it provides a way to profitably exit the property as a strategy or if necessary. This would require us to find properties in opportunity neighborhoods that have growth potential.
Once these properties are identified, we present these properties to our investors with a detail profit analysis. After our investors purchase the property, we properly rehab the property.
The rehabbing phase is important because most investors paint walls and install carpet thinking the property is ready for rental. Our question is who are they renting to? These landlords are probably renting to any tenant who is willing to pay, thus the increased chance of destroying your property. We rehab properties to attract excellent tenants and to sustain your investment so that when it’s time to exit, minimum updates are required.
Now after we rehab the property for rental purposes we go through an extensive tenant selection process making sure we selected the best tenant for your property. Once a tenant has moved in, we send our investors a detailed monthly report and directly deposit the net profit into their account. We also provide an end of the year report for your accountant to prepare your taxes.
So how much do I need to get started?
The total investment for single family homes in decent areas typically ranges from $80,000.00 to $100,000.00 for both acquisition and rehab cost combined. For multi-units (2-4 units), it could range from $150,000.00 to $200,000.00. Of course both types properties depends on the property type, number of bedrooms, units, and rents generated. It is always our objective to find the best deal possible.
Do I need cash or can I finance the project?
Many investors finance their projects, however to get the best deals on the market your chances will increase as a cash buyer. Most foreclosure/REO lenders will select a cash purchaser over a financed purchaser, especially if the price is close.
So how exactly do your rental program work?
We Find the property:
As an Illinois Licensed Real Estate Broker (Realtor) we are able to search every property available in Illinois that’s for sale and on the market. Unlike most Realtors we don’t bombard you with 100’s of emails consisting of every property for sale on market. What’s different about our approach is that we will go out ourselves to view the property and only if the property meets your investment criteria we will present the property to you. Besides, if you are inexperienced and looking at property listings sent by emails provided by your Realtor, you could find yourself making an emotional decision which could lead to your demise as a real estate investor.
We also want you to keep in mind that we are not only a Real Estate Brokers, but we are Real Estate Investors and Licensed General Contractors which virtually eliminates typical errors that most Realtors make when presenting Investment properties to potential investors.
We Analyze the property:
As 25yr. Real Estate Investors, we know exactly how to evaluate Investment property. We look at the area, we calculate the rehab cost, we evaluate the rental market, we provide the ARV (after repair value) amongst other financial ratios and calculations necessary when making an educated decision on if you should buy it.
We Submit the offers
We present legitimate offers giving you the best chance to obtain an accepted offer. We are experience negotiators ensuring that you will get the best deal while maintaining your investment objective
You Buy the property
As Realtors, we represent you as the buyer’s agent for no cost to you. It is our responsibility to facilitate the deal and act as a liaison between you, your lawyer, your insurance agent and/or in some cases your lender. We make sure that the transition is smooth and will walk with you in every phase.
We Rehab the property
As award winning General Contractors we specialize in rehabbing rental properties and re-sale properties. We are licensed, bonded and insured contractors. We have a local office giving us the public credibility you want in a Contractor. We make sure all the proper permits are pulled regardless of the municipality to avoid any job stop orders.
We provide a detailed scope of work of our projects detailing exactly what we will do and when the job will be completed.
Once we know your investment philosophy we rehab the properties accordingly. Regardless of your philosophy our craftsmanship and quality remains the same. We know the importance of meeting deadlines and making sure we cut down your holding time (elapsed time without making money).
The beauty of having us as your General Contractor is that it’s all in house. All three major phases of your investment working together for the same cause.
We find a tenant for the property
This perhaps may be the most gruesome part of the process for Investors but not for us. As Realtors, we love this process because we know that this is the final stage of a successful investment. We want to make sure we screen and select the best tenant that will maximize your investment. We screen our tenants through the National Tenant Network checking for evictions, credit and criminal history along with making sure a completed application has been submitted. We search for both Section 8 voucher holders as well as Market rent tenants.
Who are the tenants?
We are bounded by the Fair Housing Act. This means that we don’t discriminate or limit those who have the ability to rent your property. We rent to Section 8 (www.thecha.org or www.thehacc.org) tenants as well as market rent tenants. Either way, all of our tenants go through our extensive tenant selection service.
We Manage the property
Once we select your tenant, we get into management mode. The beauty of having us as your Property Management Company is that it’s all in house! We use a very unique business approach to managing property. Our philosophy is you must pay or get evicted! We don’t have any emotions tied in as (PM). We have to maintain and make sure your investment is maximized and protected. We follow the federal and state laws as well as City ordinances to make sure we provide Fair Housing to all of our tenants. No property management company or tenant is perfect. We just want to minimize all the risk involved which increases your bottom line.
What’s included in your property management services?
Our services include everything needed to find, qualify, contract and manage the tenant in your property. Our services also provide annual reporting, standard bill paying (utilities, maintenance, taxes and insurance) and coordination of eviction processes.
What about repairs?
Since we only manage properties that we rehab, your cost for repairs will be at a minimum. However, tenants will unintentionally break items or even sometimes become reckless during their tenancy and cost will be incurred.
We send a monthly statement & electronically deposit your money
We have absolutely nothing to hide. Transparency in this business is important as we want to earn your trust. We list the rents received, pay all your normal expenses for you and itemize the list of expenses. We provide this statement every month along with an annual statement itemized for your accountant.
The best part about our program is that it’s purely hands-off for the investor! We directly deposit your net income into your account on or before the 10th of every month provided that the tenant has paid.