- Suburban house with 3 bedrooms 1 1/2 to 2 bath, 2 car garage that will resell
- Three bedroom, one bath house, with basement for resale or rental.
- Two bedroom house with one bath.
I never seem to have anyone who want a one bedroom house?
But why?
I know if you are buying to resell, you want the resale value and one bedrooms don't appeal to a lot of people. But what if you are planning to rent the house out and you are in an are where many of the potential tenants are very low income? A one bedroom house might be perfect.
Consider the elderly person who does not get around very well, doesn't have any family left who will be coming over to stay, she wants a room to sleep in, a functional bath, a place to prepare her meals, and a place to spend her days. She doesn't want any uneccessary space that needs to be cleaned. She is on a fixed income and the lower the rent, the better. A one bedroom home that you can offer at a lower rent price may be just what the elderly single person wants.
Now why would we want to attract an elderly tenant? In my experience, the elderly tend to be responsible, keep their place clean, pay their rent, and overall are excellent tenants. Give a family with 4 kids or a elderly person or persons and I would probably favor an elderly tenant over the family every time. More likely to pay rent and less likely to tear the place up.
Consider the young single person who wants their own place and doesn't want to have a roommate or to live in an apartment. A one bedroom house will provide thier own private place and be more affordable over the 2 bedroom. And a single young person will take better care of the home vs having two roomates.
In all of our rentals that we have in inventory, our one bedrooms here in Kansas City seem to be fairly easy to rent and our tenants who move into the one bedrooms seem to take better care of the properties and pay their rent on time.
We currently have two one bedroom houses for sale right now. What makes them unique is that they are both side by side and are being offered as a package. I visualize this being a perfect matched set to rent to two family members who want to be close but not live together: sisters, mother & adult daughter.
One of the one bedrooms has the layout of a one bedroom, one small bath, a living room, decent sized kitchen, enclosed back porch, front porch, full basement, yard, and private driveway.
The other one bedroom is very similar to the first one except their is a huge extra room off of the bedroom, making this a 2 bedroom home if you want to use it that way. You do have to go through one room to get to the other. I could see this one being rented by a monther with a small child under 5 or a married couple using the extra room as an office or extra living room.
We are offering the two houses together as a package at $20,000. Both need about $20,000 to $25,000 in repairs, I would say less as the contractor can make one trip to work on both houses at once. All in you should have between $40,000 and $45,000.
With good credit you would be looking at an interest rate of under 6.5% (yes really, I have had several lenders tell me that investor rates for good credit people are under 6.5%). That would give you a mortgage payment of about $450 to $500 a month. Based on rental comparisons from www.socialserve.com I see that most section 8 landlords are asking about $450 a month for a one bedroom house. So if you rent one for $400 a month and one for $500 (bigger than a 1 bedroom) and you are getting $900 a month. Do the math, that's about $400 a month free and clear every month to bank for future repairs and profits.
Screen your tenants well, get one that will not move a lot and will not tear your place up (back to trying to find an elderly tenant) and you will not have to worry so much about a lot of cosmetic repairs between tenants.
Find out more, go to http://3689.goinetusa.com/property/index.cfm and look at 5216 and 5220 Norton. Then call Don at 816-523-4400!
