So you have your house rehabbed and ready to lease. You run an ad and the first prospect comes to look at the house. That prospect asks you “So how many houses do you own?” What the heck is that all about? You feel proud of yourself and your real estate empire so you say “I own 150 houses” What does that prospect hear? They hear he is rich. He won’t miss it if I don’t pay, or I need to trade my deadbeat boyfriend for him, or I can sue him and make a mint. Now if they ask “Do you have another house available?” Can be ok because they may like how you rehab your rentals but this one is too big or too small or not close enough to the schools or something.
Have you guys had that question if so how did you handle it?
I’ve found it’s better to list my rehabs for sale, and let someone else screw with the nosy looky-loos.
Suspects that ask invasive questions aren’t usually serious buyers. Real buyers ask about the house, not about my net worth.
Disclosing my portfolio is only helpful when I’m attempting to get a seller to finance me.
The rest of the time I want to maintain the appearance of the average mouse, just looking for my share of the cheese. I drive the average car. I wear the average clothes (clean, but plain). I ditch the Rolex; Mount Blanc; and the gold foil business cards. And avoid the swagger and ten-gallon hats.
The richest people I know, do have beautiful homes, but they drive 10-plus year old cars, and wear shorts and t-shirts in public. There’s a reason.
I have never thought about it that way. Both of you provided solid info on this. Something to be weary of indeed. We only deal with buy rehab flip. We have yet to buy and hold. As for now it is just too uch of a headache to deal with tenants.
No doubt about it. Lots of renters are curious about the kind of person they are renting from. Some are excited to be renting from an individual because they have had bad experiences with management companies in the past. Other people like renting from an individual because they can take advantage of this person when the management company won’t let them.
Like anything else, the trick is finding out which they are. I only work in my small town, and there are about three or four of us that control most of the rentals. Five minutes on the phone solves a lot of problems. By the same token, I go above and beyond to make sure expectations are known up front and do the maintenance on my properties it taken care of. It is a small town. Unfortunately, it is likely that a tenant has children that go to school with my children, or we go to the same church, or we went to school together. Lots of them know where I live, even though I operate through a PO Box.
When I get this question though, I am vague with the answer. For instance, maybe you could say; well, I just own the five here in town. You might own another hundred in the next town, but they don’t need to know that.