I currently own 4 (soon to be 5) SFH in my actual neighborhood.
I have a few tips for the various aspects of being a property investor, landlord, an operationally.

I like homes close to mine. It makes it easy to maintain them and keep an eye on things. I tell all prospective tenants that I am their neighbor and that alone helps filter out the ones that are thinking of hiding things (pets, extra roommates, etc...)

I buy homes with good bones and plan for the big stuff. I am slowly doing metal roofs as needed. I do the majority of work myself and I try to do as much as budget will allow before getting a first tenant. All properties must be at least $300 cash positive per month for them to be of interest for me. All of that profit goes 100% back into the properties for fixing and improving. I am playing the long game. Once I have 10 homes paid off then I will likely quit my day job and leverage those to buy more to grow the snowball.

When doing initial fix ups, plan for low maintenance and hassle in the future. Install hardwood, not carpet. New quality appliances bring in and keep better tenants. If you see a potential problem when looking to buy a place, it WILL be a problem at somepoint in the future. Quick example > bought a house last year with a remodeled shower but a shitty thin shower pan. I knew it would be an issue and sure enough it cracked. I now have to limp it along with ugly epoxy till current tenant takes a 1 week vacation and then I have to hustle to fix it correctly and for good. Just do it while the unit is empty and remove your future headache. I did not take my own advice because I bought 2 homes last year and needed to get to work on the second... Lesson learned.

Operational aspects are my least favorite thing. I have learned to enjoy them more by developing a good system for finding and screening tenants.
This came all from the help of a Pinsider a few years ago and has been a big help. I have learned to be hard and strict with my filtering of tenants to find good ones. You will have a bad one get through at some point, but refining this has meant way fewer headaches. Main things are 3x rent as total income, all persons must be listed on lease (no, cousins that showed up or extra dogs), no smokers period!, set clear expectations and verify by checking in. It is always a good idea to do a post move in inspection to see how the tenants live. Then go in 6 months later to "check" on the house. You want to give a good tenant their privacy but also see potential issues before they get worse.

For me personally, I will be in 'pay off the loan' mode before I get any more homes. Mainly becuase maintaining 5 seems to be my limit.
My current goals are to turn 2 year tenants into 5 year tenants. Turnovers take time, energy, and cost money. Despoite what someone else said, I NEVER raise rent ever for a good tenant. If they pay on time, take care of the property, and notify me ASAP when a problem comes up; then rent stays the same for as long as they love there. My properties are all cash positive so I have no issue making a little less each year (taxes and operating costs/ins go up) if it keeps a tenant in the home for multiple more years.

With a 15 year mortgage, I would like to only have a max of 5 tenants in that time frame.

My main desire is to earn money 3 ways.

But most importantly I have no idea where I could do better with my money.

20k down plus 20k in fix up gets me a 120k house that is worth 200k when I have fixed it up. So 40k plus sweat equity already more than doubles my money.
I am cash positive a minimum of $3600 on the year so that is a 9% gain on my 40k real money investment. Most years that beats the stock market.
Lastly, I take the write offs on taxes.

Best part for me is once a house is completely paid off then it is promised income for the rest of my life with relatively no risk.
(note: I have bought smart in a good city that did not even feel the blip on the radar the last housing downturn and in fact, rents went up even more then. Madison is under 2% vacancy and much of that is due to college kid turn over season which I am not subject to).

In short, other investments will have bad years, but my property should be very stable and in the long term (once paid off) it will make me big money.

I have actually found pet owners to often be good tenants. I have strict rules around it, charge a little extra, and find that they tend to stay and keep good care of the place. I will ALWAYS take dogs over cats. Cats can cause way more issues in my experience.

curious if this $120 is standard for landscape services in your area. I have a few tenants that dont maintain the laws as well as I would like. I have been unable to find a reasonable service for them to hire that is affordable.

curious what other landlords are using for a service to do background, credit, and criminal history checks? I need a new one and have some spring/summer rentals coming up.

actually you are allowed to NOT verify eligibility of you property for gov assistance. Then your house is not able to take section 8.

Outside of that, I believe you can stipulate that security deposits of 1.5x must be provided by tenant. Most giv assistance will not provide more than 1x security.

correct.
As I understand it from my real estate lawyer that specializes in this sort of thing.

You can legally opt to NOT allow officials into your units for certification/inspection, which means you are not eligible for the program.
You can also have screening parameters based on all sorts of things that ensure you are not discriminating.

I have never run in to section 8 requests and doubt I will. I have a simple primary screening that requires household income to be 3x takehome of the rental amount. Add 1k for each additional person.

If rent is 1200 per month, then you must have 3600 take home. If you have 2 dependents then that would be 5600 take home.
This is a simple approach and you are allowed to set non-discriminatory parameters. You can adjust over time as needed to fit each house/timing. All that matters is you are consistent in your use (i.e. dont discriminate)

yeah, they are set to properly screen for my needs as a landlord.

It simply comes down to what the market allows, how to find the best tenants for my rentals, and making adjustments as needed.
All my places are on average $200 below market rate so that brings me lots of applicants. Since I get lots of applicants, I use aggressive filtering.

The TLDR version when I list a place:
Good description with lots of photos that blasts out to Zillow, hotpads, etc... on a Sunday late in the day (markets to people with jobs on Monday mornings). Description notes showings available for the following Saturday for qualified applicants.

Description notes to call (no text and no email; if you do then you are automatically disqualified since you can't follow directions). Requests when calling to leave a voicemail with some basic info about yourself. I turn off my phone while at work and then pre-filter from messages.

I will get 20-50 voicemails that day. I call back every single person after 5pm that day and have a list of general questions (where do you work/how long, where do live/how long, pets/trained, etc...)

If an applicant answers all my questions and has good work/housing history, then I set up the first appointment for showing at noon the next sat.
If the next applicant I screen has better answers then I book them at 11:30
If the next applicant I screen passes but slightly worse answers (less employment history, any questions of concern, etc...) then they get booked at 12:30
I typically book 5-7 showings so I am only busy 2.5-3.5 hours on that Sat; working my way earlier/later based on phone screening.

The trick is that 30min is barely enough to show the place. The 'best' people on paper are first to see the place and as they are getting done, the next ones are knocking on the door. I hand the first people the application if they are a good fit and have found that if they want the place (they usually do) then they are filling it out in the car and bringing back as the 3rd set is showing up for showing at 12:30.

I take the applicants, historically run them through local court search and an online credit/criminal background check, and then call their most recent AND the one before landlord for info.
Whomever passes this screen gets a call back to let them know and I suggest meeting on Saturday afternoon/Sunday morning to sign the lease and for them to provide a check for security deposit to secure the place.

This far, staying under market and providing nice house with a few perk features has brought me good tenants that like to stay for multiple years.
The cost per month being below market means I typically have more tenants to pick from but I need to filter better to avoid potential issues.

A few things I have found is that people can and do lie on applications. You must follow through on background and reference checks.

insurance should be inline with your personal home (assuming you are doing a SFH rental)

Maybe $100 more annually

Yes

I have not had much success, but the process will be different for every county/taxing agency.

In short you will need to prove why your value is more accurate then what the assessor came up with.
If a recent purchase then use comps and good solid logic with you math.
They use a software that takes in account #Bed/Bath sqft, etc... there is a condition factor but they will shoot high IME.

If you are more than 10% high to comparables then it is worth fighting if you are holding the property for any amount of time.

Good luck

This is business and unfortunately that means you need to remove the emotion.
I give everyone 1 chance. I sugest:
-Message them via email/text/ whatever your normal line of communication is.
-Let them know you would like to talk in person about upcoming lease renewals.
-Remove emotion and tell them plainly that you must have rent on time going forward. Rent is due by the 5th (or whatever date)
-Going forward if you do not get payment on time, then you get to learn about the eviction process quickly.
-They currently view you as a push over and for good cause (you have let it slip for a while now)

Sounds like a good place, good location, and possibly below market rate if they have been their for years. You will find new and better tenants with less headache.

I honestly have really only 3 rules
1. Pay rent on time everytime
2. Take care of the place
3. Let me know immediately if there is an issue (leaky pipe, broken lock, etc...) so I can fix immediately and prevent a bigger problem.

Follow those rules and you will only see me 1x every 6 months when I do a maintenance inspection.
Follow those rules and your rent stays the same for as long as you live there.

Deviate and you get 1 chance to remedy. Don't remedy and I will enforce the lease.
I have thus far not had to evict and hoping my screening process continues to uphold that trend.
I have had to talk with a few tenants but so far they have all dealt very positively with the business interaction and me treating them how I would want to be treated.

Big picture > screen better next time and remove the pity case from your decisions.

congrats! I also find the reddit landlords (i think that is what it it called) good info. Not always accurate, but good to read others real experiences

It is my understanding that quite often the management company collects the rent and they pays the property owner.

One reason it to help legally isolate the management from the physical asset. For example some one sues and they are suing the management but can’t get the property.

Other reason is obviously because the manager wants to secure their payment and also money in reserves for repairs as needed.

you should have a larger liability that will offset.
My similar sized rentals are possibly $100 less annual premium than my personal home.

(and likely you should have a separate umbrella)

Property managers typically get 1 month rent commission plus 10% of monthly rent.
That is a very large cut for doing very little for me.

I also dont enter into situations where the motives of someone I am hiring are different than my motives.
Agents often want to get the unit filled, care little about proactive maintenance, and actually benefit from turnover (1 month commission each time)

As a personal landlord, I have had no problem finding tenants so see no value in having someone else make that decision for me.
I desire to have 2 year tenants become 5 year and 5 year become 10 year. I want to decrease turns as each time I do turn it is effort and money yo clean, paint, etc...

If an agent works for you, then by all means go for it. I like making sure I find the right people and if/when it goes wrong it is on me. What is the agent doing when 'oops I got you a crap tenant that trashed the place and did not pay rent' ?

I can totally see using an agent when you dont live near your place or they bring value for a skill you dont have.
In totality, I see little time or value in paying someone ~15-20% of my yearly take on a rental for the little effort they need to put in.

Again, if it works for you then great, but around here that is like paying 2500-3000 for someone to fill a likely sub-par tenant and then collect rent.

I sign 12 months minimum. Then when the lease is coming up for end of term, I schedule an annual maintenance inspection.
I walk through the property and assuming all looks in order I give them a renewal form.

The renewal for has 3 options and a deadline for return.
The options are a 1 year lease extension, 2 year lease extension, or notice to not renew and end lease at the current term.

If they are good tenants and I want to entice them to renew for 2 years, then I provide a rent reduction for the 2 year extension.

Good info and thanks for sharing. For now I am very happy with my own management. In the future/as I add more properties then things may change.

no, I end the lease at its normal conclusion and find new tenants during the best time of year to do so.

Given that we live in 4 season weather, I dont want to have a vacancy in Nov (I perceive that to be the worst month to start a vacancy as nobody wants to move with Holidays and then snow flys till March) . I dont allow month to month because of that.

I sign or renew for full leases.

not really.

It is not like I am kicking anyone out, lol.

I give any good tenant the option to renew/extend. If they dont want to, then the lease ends at the normal time and then move out.

This is really just simple business. The city I live in seems probably 80% of tenant turn over during the months of May-August. As a landlord, that is when you also want leases to end to ensure you have the greatest chance at filling a vacancy and finding the most qualified tenants.

The alternative is a month to month tenant leaving on Oct 31st with no new tenant for 6 months. Every landlord should be avoiding that.

Is the assumption it worked well because of the public shame? (because all the neighbors could see and the tenants wanted to pay up to remove the shame?)

Like most things, it needs to be a case by case basis.

I sold one.
With all the added burden and stress being put on landlords it felt like good timing to pull cash and reduce debt. Took that money and paid down loans on other rentals and now am more able to jump on the next deal I find to fix up.

I never thought I would sell, but current tenants wanted to buy and it was largely a no hassle sale. That made it an easier decision.

Pretty much. They caMe asking. I told them they could take 3% off market value if it was no hassle.

I could have probably sold for 10k higher on open market but then you deal w all the BS and “fix this or I walk crap”.

This was also my least favorite investment property due to the larger yard that no tenants take care of