Who Not How: Who can help me find/acquire rental properties

Question

I own a successful real estate land investing business that takes a great portion of my time. I am looking to acquire three or four multifamily properties in before the end of the year to round out my tax planning strategy. In keeping with the book "Who not how" I would like to try and see if there is a "who" that I should be networking with to help with this task. Rather than asking, "how can I buy these properties", I am asking "who can help me acquire these properties". Perhaps there are consultants that can help me identify the market that fits my goals, identify target properties and offer prices, and underwrite and help during the acquisition, and I'm curious if such support exists? Maybe I should just find a good RE friendly agent, maybe there are people on UpWork who specialize in helping acquire/underwrite properties, I just am putting this out to the BP ecosphere to see what I don't know. Is there a "who" for my situation that I could enlist to help?

Here are some important things to consider:

- I am pretty much at capacity running my RE business, so I don't have a ton of bandwidth to do it all myself

- Let's presume my opportunity cost is such that pulling away from my RE business to "do it all myself" for these rentals is not a good use of my time, as I'd earn a higher dollar per hour being the CEO of my RE business than the dollars per hour savings trying find off market deals (I.e. saving 20k and trying to do the rentals myself would cost me more than 20k of lost opportunity cost by pulling my attention away from CEO level tasks at my RE business, which might generate 40k of revenue for the same time)

- By the same light, turnkey could be an option, I'd be willing to pay the turnkey premium for the time savings of finding and vetting my own deal, however I know I'd still need to underwrite my own deal provided by a TK company, so having someone who can help that underwriting process would be super valuable, rather than me trying to learn from scratch how to properly underwrite the deal. (I've read all the BP books, I have a base understanding, but still need to learn the best way to find rents, check insurance, check crime, check this, check that, etc)

I know that the BP community is all about "do it yourself, you don't need a guru, save the money" type mindset a lot of the time. But are there folks I could hire to help me through the process, since my time is better spent on my existing business that I'm scaling.

Thanks so much in advance!

Matthew Bailey · Answer

Thanks for the replies everyone! @Jared Hottle, I'll drop you a line. I'm certainly interested in those midwest markets, would love to hear more about your experience.

@Sam Wilson The search for multi has always been on my radar, land investing (flipping) is like wholesaling. It is a good source of capital generation, not necessarily long term wealth. It is also very labor intensive. The tax liability of this year's success is pushing up the timeline on moving into rentals. As a RE professional the $250k (single) and $500k (married) write of for a cost seg depreciation against active income would be about a 40% savings at my tax rate. The land business is doing great, it's more beneficial for my long term wealth strategy to take the tax savings and I can afford to pay private money (friends/family) to fund the land deals. As for the rest of your questions (2) I'm open to all asset classes with the focus being on the "right" type of asset to maximize depreciation (I.e. more value in improvements relative to land cost since it's not depreciable). (3) No location preference at this time, but I think part of the tax qualification involves some level of self management, at least to part of the portfolio (clearing that up with my CPA in one week) so I'll do one CA property at least. I think that also knocks off syndications in the beginning.

Thanks Frank!

Sam Wilson · Answer

@Matthew Bailey - Great reasons! I wrongly assumed land investing was more buy and hold rather than flipping. Those are some of the same reasons I got out of flipping houses and long(er) term buy and hold rentals and syndications.

And you are definitely taking the right approach by working through the tax implications with your CPA. Why work extra hard if the tax implications make it so that it would have been better not to do the deal?!

Please let us know what direction you decided to go in and why.

Frank Rodrigues · Answer

@Matthew Bailey

Here is some good info that may interest you. I hope that helps and best of luck!

Sam Wilson · Answer

@Matthew Bailey - first of all congrats on having such a successful land investing business!

Couple of questions:

1. Is the search for multifamily due to wanting to diversify your portfolio? (Obviously this was not the point of your question, but just personally curious why would you not keep solely investing in your business?)

2. What size (doors? price?) multifamily are you considering?

3. Do you have a location preference?

As you well know, there are lots of aspects to consider with investing in any asset class.

Jared Hottle · Answer

Matt, I think you are thinking in the right direction who who not how and doing the calculus of what your highest and best use of time is. That is something I am working on as well as someone who has started his own business and feel very confident I can problem solve I find it tough to pass on things like real estate investing and deal finding but often times that laser focus by focusing on your business can make everything else grow tremendously by allowing others to fuel their fire by working for you in what they do best. I believe there are a wide variety of ways that you can invest in real estate as you know.

I am willing to be your who if you are looking at investing in Eastern Iowa. I know the area well, I invest in the area. It is a stable, midwest market. It can give solid returns in cash flow and consistent appreciation if you invest in the correct areas. If it is something you are interested in message me.

Who Not How: Who can help me find/acquire rental properties

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