Quote: (10-16-2018 10:35 AM)DarkTriad Wrote:
One more option that I've seen executed with tremendous results with considerably less assets than the OP - It may not be his style but it's so damn good I think it should be included for completeness and a resource for others. The guy was in a college town, he just invested in a very large triple decker house, and instead of renting out the floors individually, he did it as individual rooms, college dorm style.
Why did it end up feeling (and looking) like college a college dorm instead of a rooming house? The right advertising and aggressive screening. It was Boston, and the whole city feels like a college town sometimes, and it was next to a large commuter college which was transitioning to a more modern style with the college boom (they had no dorms of their own when he started this up). He advertised as "The Dorms for College X" sometimes, especially to foreign students desperately looking for such a set up. He also set up broader advertising to make sure he wouldn't miss a gem going to Harvard either.
College Dorm vibe might not be completely accurate, it was halfway to being a sorority house because he only rented to smokeshow women ("Less aggravation" he claimed, fed into female ego even if obviously untrue). With a big international student population in the city, and his screening ability it skewed heavily foreign as well, girls who had just moved to the States and literally didn't know anyone but him. Even if he had a problem case, college students are so transient they would be gone soon anyway, and he just wouldn't rent to her again after Summer Break.
A couple of other key points - the place had great location public transit wise, you could get anywhere you needed to, he made it look AWESOME, and when your home is awesome, it makes you look awesome. He was running a mini Hugh Hefner game game on a shoe string budget....and it WORKED. The girls would come to him to adjudicate minor disputes between them and they all followed his leadership without question (these were personal qualities, he was ex-military, and you would have to have genuine leadership ability to make this work, it's not just going to happen to you if you're a schmuck).
Another key point - he was charging below market for a beautiful house, so he had his pick of whoever he wanted, but he MADE MONEY off of this, he wasn't losing money. I actually think he made MORE money than the guys using more conventional business models. If he wasn't aggressively screening for highly educated women from the higher stratas of their societies all over the world, there is no way he would have been able to get away with running what was essentially an illegal rooming house for as long as he wanted. Educated, high class people don't end up with police in their business very often. If the police did end up in the area, they're too busy flirting with the hotties to try and mess with their living conditions. So instead of collecting 2 rents and being separated from the hotties, he got to collect rent from every room in the building, and the girls were constantly running around in college tucked-boob-towel style (or damn near negligees) trying to get his attention.
I mean, being next to the party zone where all the young hotties are is great logistics, but living IN the house the hotties pre-party in, and head to for their after hours activities is even better.
Thanks for sharing that. That's awesome if works but would blow up in one's face quite easily if careless.
What does he do that makes it illegal? are more than one girls sharing the room? are there any guys renter at all? I'd imagine it looks shady if most of the renter are girls