Landlord Interview #1: Scott Hunter

Even though Scott Hunter spends most of his time in Myrtle Beach, he has been a landlord for Athens properties for nearly 25 years and currently owns around 50 properties around Ohio University's campus.

How long have you been a landlord in Athens?
I’ve been doing it for about 20 years, since 1984. Well, I guess we’re getting close to 25 now, aren’t we? How about that?

How did you decide to get started?
When I was a student, my grandfather had a couple apartments and he kind of gave me some interest. At the time the students were way down and there were just properties for sale everywhere, not like it is now. I just bought a couple places, no money down, and got started.

How much time and money would you say you spend on properties here in Athens?
I’ve got a full-time office person and a full-time maintenance guy. I personally come up there six to eight weeks out of the year. My sister manages everything. I come up when everybody moves out and hire 15 to 25 workers for two or three weeks and just clean like hell. Everybody kind of like rushes for the first day of school. We come back for about a month and get everything ready for the school year.

How many properties do you own here?
I’ve got 50 units, about 125 bedrooms.

What is your average rent price?
My average is about $1,400 or $1,450 per quarter.

How has the current housing crisis affected you, if at all?
Athens is kind of recession-proof. It’s very true. I truly had not had a vacancy in 25 years of doing this, except for a couple summers early on. I don’t think that the crisis, as everyone calls it, is affecting anything. What is going to affect it more is all these fancy units that are coming to town, these 900-bedroom complexes like The Summit. I think it’s finally catching up to the market. Borderline properties in borderline locations are going to be affected first like in Queens or Brooklyn because everyone wants to live in Manhattan. We’re not in New York, but the theory is the same. You can be out on the west side or all the way up on The Summit, but usually people want to be on Mill Street, on High Street and on Congress.

What is the worst experience you've had with a tenant?
You have some that don’t pay rent—not many, but you have a small percentage every year that you have rent-collecting problems with. You have that occasional one that is so dirty in the house that when you go to show it it keeps you from renting it. That’s probably my biggest problem, really, because you don’t mind six guys in a house who are generally dirty and who have a place that when you walk in there are 50 beer cans everywhere. I don’t really care about that until it affects the ability to rent the property. You’ll have one every five years where there are guys in a big house that cause problems. It does happen sometimes. When you get five, six or seven guys in a house it can get a little crazy at times. There might be some damage done, not huge. I’ve never had the problem where people trash it on purpose, but maybe they had a party and some walls got a dent or a break or something. I’ve never had too big of a disaster, but I’ve had a couple where like all their closet was gone and there were loads of extra damages done. It’s always a question of whether I want to go after it or not.