All Forum Posts by: Alexander Felice

I sold my primary residence in Las Vegas back in November, with the idea that we are at the top of the market cycle. 

"Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered" 

What are you going to do with the new freedom during retirement? That's the much harder problem to solve in my experience. Focus on that and it should provide some clarity on how to adjust your investing strategy. 

as for the money, rates are super low and inflation is set to rise, so it's probably not an efficient use of capital to pay things off but that may not matter depending on your goals, it's good to consider though. 

I think about paying my debts off but it's so consistently working it's way down I see very little benefit to throw money at it. 

@David Pere

context absolutely matters. 

if you want a handyman to come over and install a few cabinets, you can probably take on his risk. 

if you have someone install a roof, you're crazy to take that liability on yourself. 

you want to use your insurance as a last resort in every scenario, so having the person doing the work covering their own liability is really important. for small stuff when you're new you can skirt around this to create margins a bit, but as you get bigger you want to go more legit and worry more about reducing potential downsides. 

 if this is your criteria it can be done, but the low hanging fruit has the least juice. 

Buying a no/low repair home means buying less risk, less risk means less potential reward. everyone wants a low repair home which allows sellers to ask more and it means buyers bid higher, inversely if you buy the house that's been burnt down almost everyone will run away from it which allows for a better deal in the end (potentially). 

Yes the market is competitive and increasingly so, half the people in this thread talking about Fayetteville haven't even been here for two years lol ;) but this doesn't mean you can't find good deals. The key imo is patience, because going fast for ego will have you over pay every time. Also, the MLS was a good resource about ~3 years ago but these days I barely bother looking at it. In years past wholesalers in Fayetteville were rare and lousy because they just couldn't' keep up with MLS prices but now that MLS prices are being driven by mania (people paying 75k for a 60k home and the like) some great wholesalers have been able to add value.

lastly, you ask if it's a good time to invest here and I'll say that margins were much better in the past, but they will probably continue to shrink in the future (at least while fed rates are low) so the time is best it can be given what we know.  

and I'd like to add my usual warning to new investors - don't trust real estate brokers 

Bob sleeves is a good wholesaler <3 <3 <3  

Despite Dan's optimism, know that he gets paid when you buy something from him. 

you can't trust a brokers for objective information, they get paid even if you buy lousy deals #asymmetry 

The fay market is a great place to learn, but in the last ~3 years it's efficacy has decreased significantly as the foreclosure market has slowed.

It's true that the military base allows for high levels of risk mitigation, but it comes at the cost of absolutely no growth...ever. There have been rent increases in the last year or so but I believe that to be temporary on the back of the larger economic surge. Fayetteville has grown a TAD over the last 9 years but nothing like the larger national economy and that is because it essentially has one employer that is not based on meritocracy (the army). The city had the chance to reinvest into itself recently and decided to overspend (and underfund) a baseball stadium downtown, the dumbest idea they could have possibly made and now compounded by closures thanks to Covid19. These types of decisions will cost the citizens in taxes and provide no real wage or job growth. 

Since there has been a surge of new investors here in the last few years that have shrunk the profit margins and with no appreciation in sight, the important thing to remember is that YOU MAKE MONEY WHEN YOU BUY. When you buy a rental here the day you close (after rehab) is likely the best it'll ever be, it's not going to appreciate and in many cases you can see depreciation here due to excessive sprawl. 

There is opportunity in Fayetteville for cash flow, you can do flips here as well, just be diligent about finding good deals. If you're finding easy and cheap deals its most likely in bad areas, any GOOD deals in town get scooped up within a few hours.

BAH sets the market rent around $1200, so I would suggest you get rentals slightly below that range. Stay away from Murchison road ;) 

yep I'm learning what people want as we go through this. There have been a lot of calls for numbers but I'm not sure I'm going to do much more of that in the next season because I think there is enough education on BP and I want this to be more about people, with that said, I'm still working it though. Some of the later episodes have a lot more of the financials included. 

thank you! 
 

Over the last few months I made this video series called "Meet the Members". Where I go to local investors and allow them to tell their stories of how BiggerPockets shaped their real estate experience. This is the second one of twelve: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9BhRQYAtHE&t=45s

The idea was that the BiggerPockets Podcast was a source that makes real estate feel possible because you can relate to the people who tell their story. For me, once I believed I could do this I moved towards it quite diligently and found the technical process is easy and you don't need that many skills and resources, it was a mindset shift more than anything and that started by listening to other people explain how they did it. Maybe not everyone relates the same way, but since BP began it's meteoric rise ~7 years ago now there are true success stories that have been created from this community, myself included (minus the success) and I thought it would be dope to take a look into the people who this community has created. 

Also, I have all this video equipment laying around and real estate has given me too much time on my hands (which is the whole point of buying rentals) so I needed something to keep me busy. 

Enjoy, and let me know where I should improve when I record the next batch.

North point village is not too bad, but there are pockets in that area between murchison and shaw that can be really bad. Generally I stay away

Spring lake is for rookies ;)