February Update

Things are looking better at the Houston apartment complex. Of course, the previous times I’ve said this it’s usually turned out to be a short-lived turn-around, but still, a good month is a good month. Rental income increased in February by almost $10,000, mainly due to decreased rent concessions. This month saw the highest rent revenue since April 2011. We had t pay out $3,800 for some repairs to the roof and access gate, but other expenses are running according to budget. Management implemented  a water conservation plan and that has resulted in significantly decreased water and sewer bills. They are now moving forward with a gas billback program. This means the residents will start paying a portion of the gas bill. They currently pay a portion of the water bill and with the reduction in that expense, management feels the gas billback will be accepted by the tenants. They should still have an overall lower billback cost than they had prior to the water conservation program. They also installed a separate water meter for landscaping so they can begin a billback program for landscape water usage.

Now, it’s been a long time since I lived in an apartment – at least 20 years. Maybe things have changed since then, but I know I never paid any sort of utility billback for general landscaping or anything. I paid my rent and that was it. If I recall, the units were individually metered and all the utilities were in my name, so that might be part of the reason. Off hand, I can’t remember how the units in the Houston complex are metered. It just seems strange to me to bill renters for water used for landscaping. Of course, this might also be a regional thing too. If that’s how things are done in Houston, then it makes sense that we do it too.

Last month, management asked the investors to inject another $250,000 into the property to help it get through the current rough financial situation. I opted not to contribute and apparently, I wasn’t the only one. They raised $140,000, well short of their goal. However, they are using this money to catch up on payments with vendors who we still owe money to. Management is also using the funds to make ready more units to help improve the occupancy number. They didn’t give an occupancy percentage with this report, but if I use the gross rent and vacancy numbers from the financial report, it looks like we are at about 91% occupancy right now.

On the hard money lending side of things, I didn’t blog about it, but my partner said last month that things seemed to be picking up and he was short of funds. Well, a lot can change in a month and things have now reversed and he has money waiting for investments. Our main borrower says deals have slowed down a bit, although he is still buying a couple properties a day. A short time ago, he was doing two to three times that amount. As my partner says, the business is often cyclical and he has learned to be patient and wait for good deals rather than invest in questionable deals just to get funds invested in something. That's how you go 20 years in this business without losing a penny of your investors' principle.

On a more personal note, I got my taxes back from my accountant this weekend and I got hammered on my federal taxes. I owe a couple thousand. I wasn’t sure how that could have happened until I remembered that in 2010 I converted a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA and elected to report the income over two years. I should have adjusted my withholding rate last year to help alleviate this, but I guess I forgot. The good news is that next year, I won’t be hit with another big tax bill (hopefully), as that conversion has now been fully reported. The Houston apartment complex gave me a roughly $7,000 passive loss I can claim. Unfortunately, it can only be used to offset passive gains, of which I have none. So that loss will just get carried forward until I have some passive gains I can use it against. I had thought that the interest from my hard money lending was passive income, but my accountant reminded me it is not. Based on my current investments and future outlook, I think this loss will probably end up being carried forward until the Houston apartment is sold. But that’s OK. It just means I’ll be getting a nice surprise in the future, as I’ll probably forget about it. That actually happened to me this year on my state return. I had a $400 credit from 2009 that  was carried forward, adding to my state tax refund this year.

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Shaun Gets Nostalgic

I recently spent some time reading Savvy Saver’s blog – particularly her posts about her 4-plex and how that investment has been going for her. She’s had it for 4 years now and it seems to be going well. She and her husband are managing it themselves, so they do have the occasional tenant headache they have to deal with, but all in all, it seems to be doing well for them. I am encouraged that they have held the property this long and that they didn’t jump off the REI bandwagon like so many others have done.

Reading all that has made me slightly nostalgic. Passive investing in nice, but truthfully, I do miss having a more hands-on approach to real estate investing. I really enjoyed rehabbing houses. (I didn’t really enjoy dealing with tenants that much though, so I don’t feel the urge to become a landlord again.) My passive income from hard money lending is nice and I actually am making more per month than I was typically getting from my rentals. Of course, I am also missing out on some of the benefits of property ownership, the biggest being the depreciation write-offs. The flip side is that I don’t need to worry about 1041 exchanges or any of the more complicated tax stuff that goes along with those write-offs.

Still, looking back over all the real estate investing I’ve done, I do miss the hands-on rehabbing stuff. I tend to enjoying creating order out of chaos, which is basically what you are doing when you are fixing up a foreclosure that has been trashed by the previous owner. Hard money lending is truly passive and requires little of my time (thanks to my partner), but it doesn’t make for exciting blog posts.

I’m still on several mailing lists for rehab and foreclosure properties. I’m starting to see the real estate market pick back up in my area (or at least, it appears to have stopped falling). I’m getting the itch to rehab again. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to scratch that itch any time soon. We just remodeled our house, which used up most of my credit line. I’ve recently switched jobs and I don’t yet have a feel for how busy I will be here. (Coordinating rehab projects sometimes takes a bug chunk out of my day, not to mention visits out to the property.) Most of my funds are tied up in hard money deals. But I am glad I have a self-directed IRA. Once I have enough funds in there, I could start using that money for either rehabbing or renting property. That day is a ways off though, but it is something to keep in mind.

I remember reading once that financially savvy people know there are many ways to make money whereas those with less financial knowledge think a paycheck is the only way. I see lots of ways and it’s difficult to choose. I guess that’s a good problem to have.

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February Apartment Financials

Before I get into the latest financials for the apartment, let me say the Chez Cliff blog has shut down. Cliff started out blogging about REI and, after being laid off, moved into a consultant role and steered his blog in that direction (very similar to what Kenric has done.) Cliff's last post mentioned that he didn't want to be posting on his blog just to post. I can understand that. It's easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you have to post something every week or every X days. I've felt that way too, but my desire to post informative items tends to outweigh that desire, so I can resist that urge, it seems. (Case in point: I noticed I didn't post at all last month.) A while ago, I wrote a post musing about where all the old bloggers that I used to follow went. Many have given up on their blog and / or (presumably) moved on from REI. I'm sorry to add Cliff to that list. But it's pretty clear that he's not abandoning what he was doing. In fact, it's obvious he is enjoying his new consulting business. He just got tired of blogging. It's sad to lose another blogger that I regularly followed, but I understand Cliff's reasons and I wish him the best. (P.S. I'd link to his old blog, but he seems to have taken it down. That's a decision I personally disagree with. Even if I didn't want to blog anymore, I'd still leave the blog up - simply because I think it's got a lot of useful information that people might learn from, even if no new content was being added.)

On to the latest apartment news.

The February numbers are in and the financials continue to improve. February showed a $2,600 increase in revenue from January and more than a $7,000 improvement over December. This is not quite as big a jump as management expected (last month they said they expected a $5,000 revenue increase), but it's still nothing to sneeze at. This month, managment says they are expecting a $2,000 increase in March.

Occupancy inched up another percentage point to 94% while rent concessions dropped by about 10%. Marketing and retention costs also dropped by almost 20%. Perhaps this is a sign the economy in Texas is improving. We received almost $50,000 back from the escrow impound account after the yearly escrow analysis. This is a one-time gain and the money was used to pay off some old bills that were not paid during the leaner months of last year. Overall, for the first two months of the year, we are running about $40,000 ahead of our budgeted income. Granted, that large chunk of change from the escrow impound refund helped us, but moving foward, I think we'll be in better shape. As mentioned last month, our March loan payment will be about $8,000 a month less due to our property tax valuation appeal from last year. That will definitely improve the bottom line. I'm crossing my fingers, but it looks like we might have turned the corner here.

In other news, I have completed the rollover of my Roth 401(k) into my self-directed Roth IRA. As soon as my partner finds a new hard money loan, I'll put those funds into action.

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Self-Directed IRA Is Now Profitable

Last year, I started the process of converting one of my IRAs to a self-directed Roth IRA. It took about 5 months to get it all set up, but it's been rolling along for a while now. I'm pleased to say that, as of last month, it has become profitable. What I mean by that is I incurred about $3,500 in setup expenses to get the everything transferred and the LLC set up. With last month's hard money payment, I have now recouped all those setup expenses and the IRA is now out of the red.

I also recently changed jobs and am now working on rolling my Roth 401(k) from the old job into my self-directed IRA to give me some more capital to invest with.

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