All Forum Posts by: Doug N.

Such a great inspiration - and in classic BP style. I am now inspired to paste the good parts of the article below.

Congratulations, Cory! May we all shamelessly copy your moves!

“I had it mapped out: Buy 10 duplexes—10 two-families and I could easily be a millionaire,” he says. “I hit that target within eight or nine years. After that, I was like, `Now what?’ I said, `This is kind of fun. I’ll keep doing it.’” He’d achieved $1 million in net worth by 2004.

He also stuck with investing in areas he knew. He kept all of his investments in what he calls his “strike zone.”

“What I discovered was if you picked an area in town that was desirable and was within transportation and biking distance to work—with a lot of activity in terms of ethnic restaurants and shopping areas—you start attracting a lot more millennials and college kids,” he says. “I pretty much focused on areas near the campus and not far away but that weren’t too high priced.”

Staying local helped him manage his real estate while running his other business. He could easily run out at lunchtime and do a showing. “All of my buildings were about a mile and a half between work and my house,” he says. All told, he found it took him about an hour a month to manage 10 units.

“I thought I if I can manage 10 units in an hour a month, let’s bring that up to 100 units,” he says.

Another smart move was outsourcing the property management. Binsfield handled light repairs himself for a while before but says he isn’t mechanically inclined. He soon found a reliable contractor to tackle the work. Investing in property management software made it easier to field requests from tenants and send them off to the contractor. “I’m like the conductor to the orchestra,” he says.

What advice does Binsfield have for others who want to generate an income like his from real estate? Start small.

“Anyone can buy one property,” he says. “Once you buy that first one, two or three years later you buy the second.” You may not end up owning 97 units, like he does, but if you buy in the right market, you should be ahead of the game.

call. write. market. learn. 

repeat daily.

best of luck.

Hi Ed - 

You can just follow @Ned Carey's advice and do fine. I always keep an eye out for @ben leybovich (rare nowadays), @jay hinrichs, @steve vaughn, @k marie p, and a few others. 

Try not to follow me, though - unless you want unwanted advice on meth labs, cheap wine and public records. 

Best of luck, and read, read, read! It's all here on BP.

@David Dey - You will get another award for hilarity if you keep it up - and I suspect you will!

Yes, please let us loudly and frequently thank all the other investors busy on Craigslist and the MLS. I have already contacted Hallmark for a 'Thank You For Not Competing' card design, but... I have no database for these guys, except for their BP posts.

Have to go, wife is getting jealous. Talk soon!

@Priscilla Durkin

Welcome, and it sounds like you bought at a great time. I would heartily recommend reading anything by @ben leybovich re MF. It's gold. 

Hi there - 

Did we miss talking about the part where it's a condemned home?

Inquiring minds want to know:

Is there a fine line (or any line, really) between crappy books and pure fantasy?

@ben talks a lot about the finer points of due diligence. 

I will add one point of my own: If the spreadsheet looks like it was produced in five minutes or less... oh, I forget the rest. 

David Dey wins my coveted Public Records Advocate™ prize - and I hope to hand out a lot more in the future. (Please note: this prize is made of pixels, not cash or trips to Disneyland, etc...)

I have started a few threads on public data/records, geodatabases, remote viewing and war-driving, and... no responses. Oh, well. More for me, I guess! 

I can't tell you how glad I am to see someone profiting from *our* data, *our* public records. I really wish more folks would take advantage of this wonderful and free resource. 

It goes a lot deeper than the assessor's roll, though. Permit databases are a rich trove of detailed data, and often include phone numbers not found in any other data sources. Same with mortgage documents, deeds, marriage and divorce records, etc. 

Great post, David. Tear it up!

@Brian Adams, @Mark Moschand @Christian Brodin are all on the mark here. It's all about the relationship - nothing less, and nothing more. There is no magic, no secret, and no mystery to this process. A lot of folks are expecting magic and secrets simply because they prefer to avoid actual work. Yes, I said it. And I will say it every day, loudly and clearly, because I see it every day. And I *love* it, because it makes my job is so much easier - I have *no* competition in this area - at all. A few commercial brokers are sending lazy letters, and nothing else. And I can post like this all day long, and still generate no competition. People are really funny. lol? 

Very little is to be had online (MLS, LoopNet, CL), especially nowadays.

I like to make a geodatabase from county and other data, and target these owners personally - it can work really well if you are ready to put in the time and energy.  

Pic for clarity, MF by doors. Enjoy, and good luck!

@Christian Brodin are MF valuations still a secret?