Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Has anyone here ever purchased a rental property? I'm considering purchasing a single-family home and I'm curious how someone selects a specific property and a specific neighborhood/location.
Selecting the property itself seems fairly straightforward: work with a realtor to find a house within your budget and make sure it doesn't have any major issues. I know what I'm looking for: a house that is move-in ready and doesn't need a whole lot of fixing up. Obviously, there will be upkeep costs and I'm realistic about that. What I really don't want is to purchase a 200k house and find out I need to replace the entire foundation for another 50 grand. This seems like something a realtor can help me with especially if the house has publicly available inspections.
I already have a general idea of the location where I want to buy. I have family who live close by and they would be able to help me manage the property. But even within a 5-10 mile area, I'm thinking there must be criteria for selecting a better neighborhood than others. Obviously cost comes into play here as well, but without spending a lot of time on the ground, I'm unsure how I would select a location where the house *at least *retains its value.
Any input from those with rental properties, especially those who own in a different state, would be appreciated.
The word "realtor" is a trademark of a specific organization. In order to avoid encouraging that organization's market dominance, one should instead say "real-estate agent".
Wait, you’re fighting their market dominance by…telling people that they exist and are important?
That seems counterproductive. You should be using the term; if it loses its distinctive character, they lose the legal protection of the trademark.
Imagine a graph with the linguistic dominance of "realtor" vs. "real-estate agent" on the x axis and the enhancement of the market dominance of Realtors vs. real-estate agents (not the market dominance itself) on the y axis.
When x = 0, Realtors are just an eccentric group of real-estate agents that insist on using their trademarked name even though everybody just calls them real-estate agents. y = 0, or even a negative number because people are annoyed by their behavior.
When x = 0.75, most people incorrectly call real-estate agents realtors. The typical person who wants to sell a house will type "realtor" into Google and will hire a Realtor rather than a non-Realtor real-estate agent. Therefore, the market dominance of the Realtors is enhanced by the linguistic situation: y = 0.75.
When x = 1, as you say, the trademark becomes genericized by a court ruling. It now is legitimate for all real-estate agents to call themselves realtors, the official Realtors no longer get extra traffic funneled to them by Google, and y = 0.
If, IRL, x = 0.5, then I think pushing it down to 0.25 is more palatable then pushing it up to 0.75 and hoping that it overshoots to 1.
Y=0.8 currently
More options
Context Copy link
Hmm. You make a good point.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link