J Scott

Archive of J Scott's Articles

J has written 27 article(s) for the BiggerPockets Blog.

Newbie Wholesalers: READ THIS!

by J Scott | February 23, 2011

I get a lot of emails and phone calls from newbie wholesalers who are looking to do their first deal (and very few that are actually experienced). Most of the time, they want to run a deal past me that is too thin or for some other reason just doesn’t fit my style of investing. [...]

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Flipping Houses

Controlling (And Conquering) Your Appraisals

by J Scott | January 19, 2011

I’ve addressed this topic several times in the forums, and much of this post is taken from an old forum post I wrote, but this subject is important enough to rehabbers and other investors that I wanted to make sure it was captured here on the blog… One of the biggest areas where rehabbers and [...]

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Real Estate

The Myth of “No Rehab” Rehabs

by J Scott | January 12, 2011

In the course of a typical week, I get to see and hear about a lot of properties for sale to rehabbers. Inevitably among them are properties advertised by sellers or wholesalers as “No rehab needed” or “Move-in ready condition!” Now, every time I read an email from a wholesaler that says a property needs [...]

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Real Estate

How NOT To Negotiate an REO Property

by J Scott | October 20, 2010

This week, I’m going to depart from my usual attempt to be informative and insightful, and instead use this space to share an interesting email exchange I had with a particular non-professional REO listing agent (and yes, I ended up taking a very non-professional tact as well). Actually, I think this post will be informative [...]

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Landlord Tenant

The New Landlord Checklist

by J Scott | October 6, 2010

After years of doing rehabs, I’ve just purchased my first long-term rental property and put it on the market a few days ago… In preparation, I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the past couple weeks getting organized and preparing to be a landlord. I knew that when the day came, there would be [...]

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Real Estate Investing

Analyzing a Real Life “Rent & Flip” Deal

by J Scott | September 15, 2010

I picked up a new house last week…I call it “The Haggle House” due to the extensive negotiation it took to convince the bank to sell me this REO… In this post, I want to walk through the analysis I did to determine whether this property would be a good candidate as a mid-term rental [...]

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Real Estate Investing

Introduction to Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

by J Scott | September 2, 2010

Today’s Quiz: What is my return on the following investment: I bought my first investment property back in August 2008. I paid $63,500 for the house using my own cash. I spent the next two months rehabbing it with $34,000 of my own cash. It sat for about 5 months before I lease-optioned it for [...]

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Real Estate

Is Your Realtor a GREAT Real Estate Agent?

by J Scott | August 11, 2010

There’s a BiggerPockets forum thread going on this week that addresses the issue of realtors, and whether they are worth their fee when selling your investment property. While I’m not going to address that particular issue in this post (suffice it to say, I believe great agents are worth every penny and not-so-great agents will [...]

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Taxes

The Basics of “Real Estate Professional” Status for Tax Purposes

by J Scott | August 4, 2010

One of the biggest challenges real estate investors face is keeping the profits that they earn from their investments. Just like any other business, the IRS is going to want to take as big a chunk of your profits as possible, and knowing how to use the system to your advantage will help you keep [...]

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Real Estate Investing

Why Caps Rates Are So Valuable

by J Scott | July 21, 2010

My last post discussed how to analyze the financials of an income-producing property. In that post, I discussed a bit about Cap Rate and how to calculate it. But, I didn’t spend a lot of time discussing why it’s such an important metric. In this post, I’ll try to do that… Let’s say you were [...]

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Real Estate Investing

Introduction to Real Estate Investment Deal Analysis

by J Scott | June 30, 2010

Have you ever wondered what a Pro-Forma or a Cap Rate is? Are you trying to figure out what NOI means? Do you want to know how to calculate the various types of ROI, like Cash-on-Cash Return and Total Return? If yes, then read on… We get a lot of posts on the BiggerPockets forums [...]

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Real Estate Investing

Apartment Investing and The (Other) Golden Ratio

by J Scott | June 24, 2010

While most of my active real estate efforts go towards rehabbing/flipping houses, I’m a huge fan of investing in apartments. I’ve done some passive investing in the past (invested in other people’s projects) and am always on the looking for great apartment deals to add to my portfolio. Why do I love apartment investing so [...]

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Rehabbing

Better, Faster, Cheaper

by J Scott | June 9, 2010

There’s a popular saying in the technology industry (an industry where I spent much of my career): “Better, Faster, Cheaper — Pick Two“… Basically, the idea was that you can build something at 1) higher quality, 2) in less time, or 3) for less money — but you can’t do all three of those simultaneously. [...]

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Rehabbing

Are You Sure Your Independent Contractors Really Are?

by J Scott | May 26, 2010

As a real estate investor — and especially if you’re a house flipper — you will no-doubt be hiring a lot of independent contractors to support your business. And I’m not just talking about the people who will be working on your houses; your real estate agent, your attorney, your CPA, and most of the [...]

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Real Estate

Finding Your Accountant. How Can a CPA Help Your Real Estate Business?

by J Scott | May 19, 2010

I’m always a bit concerned when I read an email or a forum post by a new investor asking about how he should structure his business, how he should prepare his taxes, how he should manage deductions, etc. These are the types of investing tasks that must not be taken lightly, and where a smart [...]

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