All Forum Posts by: Ricky A.

@Yates Snyder , welcome to BP.  

My advice:

• Being in the Triangle, start going to the main TREIA meeting and any sub-group(s) that you find convenient or beneficial (http://www.treia.com).  Network to meet people who can become mentors, partners, investors, etc.
• Time = money. To me, that means that regardless of where you are in your REI career, you probably have some value you can add. Typically, younger people have more time than money and more experienced people often have more money than time. Figure our your valuable resource (because inevitably you have something that IS valuable) and use it to add value to others who can be or become partners, mentors, etc. and this will accelerate your REI career.

Welcome, @Willie Morgan !

If you haven't already, I'd suggest attending some of the TREIA (www.treia.com) meetings.  The main meeting is the 3rd Tuesday of the month (which was last night), and there are a number of smaller, more localized meetings.

It's a great way to meet a ton of local people at various stages of their RE investing careers.

Wow, @Kim Book !  Great progress!  Keep it going!

What's your overall gameplan?  Are you starting a brokerage?  Looking for rental?  What?

@Kim Book , how are you progressing toward your goal?

@Robert Molloy ,

I'm going to throw this out there, but take it for what it's worth (advice from a newbie investor without a single RE-specific website...though I do have a lot of non-RE websites.).

One of my concerns is the domain name. I think we often fall into the trap of using a domain name that speaks to us as the site owner but that doesn't necessarily speak to our intended audience.

That's my fear of using the word "investments" in the domain name. I think it matches how you are thinking about your business, but it doesn't match what your desired acquisition or "disposition" sides are thinking.

I don't think a person who's behind in payments or who needs to sell a house fast or who wants to buy a house without a bank is thinking about "investments" in the traditional sense.

Base case is that they think it's just a weird terminology wrt what they're looking for. Worst case is that they read into it a negative connotation that this "investment" company is taking advantage of my situation.

I would prefer something like washingtonoakproperties.com instead. I think it helps invoke the thought of a company that deals in properties and can help me solve my problems of needing to sell my *property* fast or buying a *property* without bank financing.

I keep saying I'm going to finally make it to the general meeting, and something comes up each time. In-laws are visiting tomorrow. I'm gonna make it soon.

@Yvette V. ,

Wow! That's tough!

I'm not sure if the PM having E&O would help much. Since she's not communicating, how do you find out if she has it? Plus, I'm thinking it would only kick in if there's a suit and she called on it. Since she's new to PMing, I doubt if she has it anyway.

Reading your story, I'm just thinking of the psychology behind it. New property manager, lenient to tenant on move in amount, lenient on late rent, doesn't want to deal with a PM 101 issue...sounds to me like she's extreme in avoiding confrontation.

In that case, I would "pop in" on her and demand an answer to the questions in person. She's not communicating because she doesn't want to deal with you just like she refused to deal with the tenant. Don't give her a choice by showing up unannounced.

Also, giving her the space to tell the truth is important. If you think she might have been misusing the tenants funds, you might want to give the appearance of giving her an out by letting her know you can work something out. Getting to the truth is, of course, the goal.

I had prepared a pretty long reply detailing how I use Classes & Customers:Jobs, but after re-reading the OP, I wonder if there's a slight typo.

@Bryan Vince , did you mean to say you use Classes=properties and Customers=tenants? Or did you really mean Classes=tenants?

Assuming the former, I think the cash flow statement should give you the cash in / out that you're looking for. To make the report perfect for your needs, you can:

• Filter by Class(=property) to see the cash flow by property
• Filter by Name(=Customer=tenant) to see the cash flow by tenant

The Filter is a tab under "Customize Report"

If you're missing transactions that should be there or getting extra transactions that shouldn't, you can tweak the CFS under Edit-->Preferences-->Reports & Graphs-->Company Preferences-->Classify Cash. Generally, you'll only need to do this for Balance Sheet items (because the QB CFS starts with net income, so income/expense items are already captured) .

The *best* lease end month may depend on whether there is something unique about your tenant base. For example, in the specific area where my units are, there are two major med schools nearby. Therefore, there is a significant benefit to having leases start in late spring to match the moving times of new doctors doing their residency and fellowships.

If there are no circumstances that create a perfect lease time, maybe consider staggering your rentals, so you have less chance of multiple simultaneous vacancies. In that case, I would ask what the worse leasing months are (I've often heard the winter months during the holidays) and avoid those.

You started by saying the houses look vacant. If the houses are, indeed, vacant, then they are currently bringing no value to anyone. Therefore, regardless of what the records say, purchase price and all, try to talk to the owners to see what the deal is.

If owning a vacant house is worth it for the bulk of them, that is, they ARE creating some value to the owners, then stop calling based on the mortgage numbers. But if the houses are not creating some real value then negotiate with them.

You may have to become more creative with underwater houses but if the owner has no better options, you may be able to find something that works for you.

One of the recent BP podcasts had a story about an investor making a deal that worked when the theoretical numbers didn't.