Short Term Rental: Realtor, Investor, Manager · Atlanta, GA · Member since 2017 · 138 posts · 85 votes
Hello! My name is Ruben and I more than thrilled to be a new member of the Bigger Pockets community. After being in Boston for +6 years I am relocating to Atlanta where I have family and looking to invest in multi-family homes and wholesale properties as a wholesaler.
A little background about me - huge believer in partnerships - I've build an e-commerce business around partnerships, team, systems and marketing. I do have experience in marketing especially on Facebook where we spend a lot of time/analytics/ resources on FB Ads. As a matter of fact we do have a personal Facebook rep assigned to us from Facebook so if anyone ever has questions around leveraging Facebook for your own endeavors in the RE space please do reach out!
I look forward to building win/win relationships. If you're in the Atlanta region or looking to invest here, please connect with me and let's help each other breakthrough our goals! Thanks for reading :)
@Ruben Kanya I'm focused on the City of Atlanta, so once you expand the discussion to the suburbs I am out of my depth.
Also, when you said multi-family I was thinking of apartments. If you are talking about buying a duplex with an owner-occupied mortgage and living in one side of it, that's a whole different discussion. The question then becomes more about where you want to live (or are willing to tolerate) than the return on investment.
This may be obvious to you but the most important advice I could give anyone about where to live in metro Atlanta is: Minimize Your Commute.
Hi @Ruben Kanya, welcome to Atlanta! I relocated down here from CT and have totally loved it. Let me know if you have any questions about the market or multi family in the Atlanta area, it is on fire right now!
@Ruben Kanya Welcome to Atlanta! I'm curious why you are focused on multi-family. Cap rates have been trending down and thousands of new apartments are being built right now, which may put downward pressure on rents in the next few years, especially for older buildings.
I'm seeing more opportunity in single-family right now in Atlanta. That's just my opinion. Let us know what you are seeing!
@Ruben Kanya Hi Ruben! I live in Dallas, but am in Atlanta for the week. We will be in Dunwoody on Saturday at a MeetUp we are hosting to talk about Apartments. We own in Dallas and Atlanta currently, with over 2100 units (thru syndication). Apartments/Multifamily are still a great investment right now if you know where to look.
Partnerships are definitely key in this business...and choosing a good partner is also key...because getting out of a bad partnership is can be more challenging than getting out of a bad marriage!
I am definitely interested to hear about what has worked for you on FB. I have run ads before, but honestly do not see the benefit, but perhaps it is because I do not know how to track the results.
Hi Dan @Dan Mahoney I appreciate you taking the time to reach out. Great insight on the cap rates decreasing, I'm certainly doing my due diligence as I look to deep dive and familiarize myself more with the greater Atlanta area.
Would you say that you've seen this across the board in the greater Atlanta area or were you seeing this trend in a specific county? I ask this because I do agree with you, single family home values are certainly going up, my folks actually bought a place in Fayetteville and have seen the property value go up significantly with the whole Pinewood Studious wave. Originally my goal is to invest in multi-family homes to "house-hack" so to speak and continue investing in multiple family units to have my tenants cover the mortgage and build the equity.
Of course the numbers need to make sense with what the market has so I do appreciate your insight and any other resources worth looking into that you may suggest and I will do the same :)
Hi @Tamiel Kenney - thanks for the heads up! Unfortunately I won't be in Atlanta until end of August but defintely would love to be kept in the loop for any future meet ups you'll be hosting!
Key note - I notice you mentioned knowing 'where to look' - Atlanta is large and I am getting more and more familiar with it, what neighborhoods have you seen are great areas to invest in when it comes to multi-family units?
Additionally - we've had success optimizing for conversions with image, video ads and as well as Instagram from an e-commerce perspective leveraging what we call a "look-a-like audience". The main question I would have to initially ask is what were you optimizing for? Traffic, lead generation? Based on that there are many metrics that you can look at in the ad campaign that can tell you a story...
1) A low number of impressions might spark a few questions:
- Is your ad targeting the right audience? In other words are the keywords in your campaign relevant?
-Is your ad being shown to the same people?
- Is your targeted audience big enough? Is your budget adequate to the size of the audience?
2) A low CTR (Click-Through rate) may spark the following questions:
- Does the Ad speak to the audience? Is the Ad copy drawing people in or away?
- Do you have a proper call to action "Learn More" vs. "Buy Now"button.
3) High CTR with low conversions (i.e. email options) - this gets interesting....(bc at this point you're so close!)
- Is the message uniform? (does the ad say one thing and the website another)
-Are you offering a "no brainer" value on the landing page (website)
- Do you have a video on the landing page to build trust, introduction, lure them in?
These are just some thoughts at the top of my head, usually I'd have to have a closer look at the whole funnel to see areas we can improve on. :)
@Ruben Kanya We buy South of the airport. That area is gentrifying and the city is investing money in the area. North of the airport are the popular areas, but would be costly. We buy B & C class assets, over 150+ units.
@Ruben Kanya I'm focused on the City of Atlanta, so once you expand the discussion to the suburbs I am out of my depth.
Also, when you said multi-family I was thinking of apartments. If you are talking about buying a duplex with an owner-occupied mortgage and living in one side of it, that's a whole different discussion. The question then becomes more about where you want to live (or are willing to tolerate) than the return on investment.
This may be obvious to you but the most important advice I could give anyone about where to live in metro Atlanta is: Minimize Your Commute.
@Dan Mahoney thanks! Again great points and I am glad we made the distinction. Yes duplexes rather than apartments is what I'm going for and the point that you make about the city of Atlanta brings the point home that I need to do a deeper dive into getting to know the market of the suburbs. Secondly, I couldn't agree more... the location of this duplex, the commute time and access to the city is major - I've been informed of the Atlanta traffic. Your correct, that itself is a huge piece to consider for myself and the appeal /demand of that location for future tenants!
@Tamiel Kenney interesting thanks for clarifying. Are you more into apartments and town homes or do you also invest into duplexes? South of the airport being Clayton, Fayette, Henry, Coweta counties? Thanks.
@Ruben Kanya We only do large apartments 150+. We are buying south of the airport currently....I'm sorry I do not know the county. We are starting to expand our search to include other areas of Atlanta as well.
Hi Ruben. And welcome to BP. I'm. new here also and want to begin investing in the Atl area as well. I'd like to speak with you about that and FB ad marketing. I'm a real estate agent in NYC. Please reach out. Thank you and good luck.