All Forum Posts by: Robert Taylor

I grew up in the Milwaukee area and still live there now. I've also spent a good amount of time in Florida as well. I'd say that besides WI and Connecticut (where I did live for a while) I've spent more time in FL by far than any other state. I think that they both have their pluses and minuses. The Milwaukee market seems to be much more steady and predictable over the long term compared to most areas in FLA. I think in Milwaukee, you can pretty much expect that the market will continue to appreciate at a certain, rather slow pace, assuming of course that we don't have any more crisis like we had back in 2008. FLA's markets seem to go through a lot more localized boom and bust cycles from what I've read. I think that the Miami market is the most likely to have booms and busts, but from what I remember, it happens in many of the smaller markets like Sarasota as well. Now, that presents kind of a double-edged sword, because obviously of you're lucky and time things right and buy in before one of the mini-booms, you have a chance to make some great shorter term returns if you're able and wise enough to sell out at or near the peak, but conversely you could also end up buying into a bust cycle and losing just as much! Compared to that, the Milwaukee market would be pretty predictable, I think you'd simply see a much slower but more steady and dependable appreciation over time in Milwaukee.

Now, one big disadvantage to investing in Milwaukee (or anywhere in WI) as compared to FLA are the outrageous property taxes you'll be stuck paying in WI, which make FLA taxes look like pocket change. In WI and especially in certain places like the city of Milwaukee and most of Milwaukee County, the taxes are as high as they get! In approximate numbers, on a $300,000 home in the city of Milwaukee you'll be paying somewhere around $9,000 a year in property taxes. That's what I call a major expense! I'm not as familiar with the taxes in FLA, but I do know that they're a fraction of what they are here. Now, if you simply invest outside of Milwaukee County, such as in Waukesha County directly west of Milwaukee County, you'll be paying considerably less. In the city of Brookfield for instance, a house with the exact same valuation will cost you around $5,000 a year in property taxes, still nothing to joke about but also a heck of a lot less than in the city of Milwaukee!

I just wanted to bump this one back to the top of the pile, I've read probably 75% of it by now (I'm not going start to finish but skipping around) and its really, really good and so informative. Remember, I've been doing this for years and have learned "the hard way" many things about flipping and now have a pretty good string going of not just making a profit on every one but making good profits, yet I'm still learning from this book! I can only imagine what a newbie would be able to learn, its a goldmine of info!

So, my original reason for posting this was because I was in this section of the forum and saw post after post of people hoping to find the info they need in some particular guru's crap that they sell for WAYYYY too much money, or the seminars they overcharge for, the boot camps, blah blah blah! DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON GURU CRAP!!! JUST BUY THIS BOOK FOR $29!!!!!

My first question for you is what area of real estate investing are you looking to get into? Wholesaling, flipping, buy and hold, notes, lease options . . . . I could keep typing for hours, there are so many different methods to being an investor that some people are able to make good money doing, but if you're looking to be a landlord, then a flipping boot camp is a total waste!

After that, I'd also agree with Joshua and Mary B and say to spend your time here on BP and anywhere else you can find free AND RELIABLE info on what you want to get in to. BP is just an incredible resource, if you work it right, you'll honestly be able to learn 1000 times more good info than at ANY boot camp or whatever else the generally sleazy guru's are hawking these days!

If its house flipping you're thinking of, then I will make ANOTHER plug here for J Scott's book on flipping houses, its DAMN GOOD! I've been flipping/investing since 2004, (actually bought my first duplex in 1998 or 99, can't remember which!) and its been a long, long time since I've lost money on a project, in fact I've had a string of them that have been quite profitable over the last year or so, so I'd like to think that I know quite a bit about flipping houses. Yet, I still bought the J Scott book recently and have been learning more by reading it. If you're new to the game, the book should be your bible!

I've never been a fan of guru's, boot camps, or whatever other new way they've come up with to separate you from your money. They make you think they have some MAGIC secret or formula that you'll learn and then its off to the races when the truth of the matter is that probably 98% of the attendees will never do a thing with that info and were basically just ripped off! There is NO MAGIC SECRET OR FORMULA, its just good ol hard work and all the info you should ever need is right here on BP!

Hi Ryan,

Let me say right off the bat that I'm NOT a super experienced, big time landlord or even close to it but I'll throw in how I look at properties to hold for the heck of it! I shy away from using most of the ratios that we see a lot including here on BP. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with using them, they're just not for me for some reason. I really just like to take a house by house approach to buying anything, to flip or to hold. There are just so, so many variables and "wildcards" that can figure into a house purchase, I just have trouble blindly plugging the numbers into some ratios and hoping for an answer. Plus, its a big enough purchase that I think its worth the time to do a detailed analysis of each one. In the end, my go/no go decisions can vary but mainly I'd say the same thing that Dawn Anastasi has in her signature line, that if it makes money, it makes sense!

First, what price range are you thinking of here? The areas you mentioned have a fairly wide spread in prices, South Milwaukee and 'Stallis on the lower end and Tosa and nearly anything in Waukesha County on the higher end. Also, what are your financing plans? Not trying to dig into your personal life here, I'm just wondering what kind of interest expense you would be looking at here as well as property taxes, which as you correctly pointed out, are MUCH lower in Waukesha County!

I think you're very smart for only looking closer to work/home, the travel time adds up so fast and is a near total waste! As you've figured out and as the ratios will tell you, generally speaking the more expensive rentals to purchase don't return as much cash flow percentage wise as compared to lower priced properties. I live a block south of UWM where the duplexes go for nearly $200k for dumps to $350+K for nice ones and when I plug my address into rentometer.com, it says that the average rent for a 3 bedroom is $1268. Now if I go a half mile west into Riverwest, where these days you can often find decent duplexes for around $100k and sometimes less, rentometer says the average 3 bed rent is $918. So, even though the purchase prices are probably 1/2 to 1/3 that of houses east of the river, the rents are nearly 3/4 of the much higher priced homes!

As far as "variable monthly expenses", I assume you mean repairs, right? If you do, that again is somewhere that I shy away from just using a ratio or percentage and I actually try to estimate my number, based on the age and condition of the place.

If you could enlighten us to the price range you're looking at and what kind of interest rate you're looking at, that would help a lot!

I won't say that I'm an expert on challenging assessments in the city of Milwaukee, but I've known 2 or 3 people over the years that have attempted to challenge assessments, using the "much lower recent sale price" method and none of them had much luck. They LOVE their property tax money here and are hard put to part with it!

I don't see anything about an audiobook either, maybe its something for them to consider, although for me personally, I think I learn much better by reading and by concentrating on what I'm reading. Although maybe they could hire James Earl Jones to read the audiobook, now that would be cool!

I bought the J Scott book on flipping houses several days ago and have been reading it whenever I can and I think its GREAT! Now, I've been investing in RE to some extent since 1999, when I bought my first duplex and started flipping houses part-time in 2004, flipped five of them between 2004 and 2007, took a break from it until 2012 when I thought the market was good again and have now been doing it full-time ever since. I've done flips in value from about $60k on the low end up to $750k on the high end, so I've had experience in nearly all levels of my local market. In my time flipping from 04 to 07, I had one that I lost money on, two that broke even and two that made some money. Since getting back into it, all of my projects have been profitable, several of them have been very profitable. So, I think I can say now that I honestly know a pretty good amount about flipping houses and am learning quite a bit about other methods of RE investing as well. Yet, I always believe that you can learn more about anything, which is why I bought J Scott's book and so far, I'm VERY impressed!

Here's the thing and the point I want to get across to anyone looking for a guru to get them the info or the "magic secret" to flipping or any other part of RE investing. THERE IS NO MAGIC SECRET! Its a business like any other and requires hard work, organization, follow through, etc etc. From what I can see, everything I think I would cover is in this book. I've already picked up several new ideas and things to learn myself and I've been doing this for years. I would HIGHLY recommend that before you spend $99 or $299 or whatever price whatever guru wants to take from you for his/her info, that you spend just $29 and buy this book instead. No, he's not promising any magic or overnight riches, but what would you rather get, some honest advice and education or have someone "blow smoke" up your you know what???

Several people that have been very successful in different types of businesses have all given me the same advice over the years, that if you have even an OK idea for a business, if you run your business well, run it efficiently and work hard at it, you're likely to succeed over the long run. Conversely, even if you have an incredibly great, awesome business idea and you run a sloppy business and you're inefficient, you're likely to fail. Flipping houses is no different and this book will show you how to do it the right way!

FULL DISCLOSURE-I'm NOT at all connected with BP, J Scott or anyone else connected with the book. I did exchange a few emails with J Scott about a year ago, just to discuss how much I liked his website and inquire about his plans to invest in my area-that's it!

Hi @Ashlee Reimer my advice would be to hook up with someone (as you can see, you've already found several potential contacts here on BP!) that knows that part or really all of Chicago very well and who can advise you on what you're looking at and what your goals are, how much you're looking to spend, etc, etc.

Not trying to be nitpicky, but even when you say that you're looking at the "south east" part of Chicago, you're still talking about a HUGE area! I've never been to the Vancouver area (I've heard its a great place to visit for many reasons though!) but I looked it up and the entire Vancouver metro area is about 2.5 million people. Chicago itself has 2.7 million residents, metro area has 9.5M, so you're talking about a city or metro that's 4 times the size of the Vancouver metro, its BIG! Also, the south side of Chicago, as I and others have mentioned has a very wide variance in neighborhoods, residents, etc. For instance, President Obama's house (not the big white one in DC, but his actual family home!) is in Hyde Park, a really cool area on the south side of Chicago, full of lots of beautiful older homes as well as apartments and condos that sell for a lot of money. Yet, you can drive just a little ways, blocks even and be into some pretty darn sketchy areas where you really have to watch your back. Last time I checked, they still don't make maps yet that show where "the hood" is!

Again, don't take me the wrong way here, not trying to discourage you one bit, but is there a particular draw for you to Chicago? Besides what others have mentioned about the Cook County landlord laws, the nice or even average parts of Chicago are very expensive places to buy property in. I know Vancouver is a nice place to live, I have a large number of extended family members who've lived in and around Seattle for many years, but I'd think that Chicago would actually end up being even more expensive-IN THE NICE PARTS! Some parts of the Gold Coast on the north side have areas where houses regularly sell for $5M, $10M or more. (although they are VERY nice houses!) I guess I'm wondering a bit why you wouldn't want to invest in a mid sized are like Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, etc where you can get in for less? I'd think that the only pricier cities in the US would be NYC, LA, San Francisco, not sure where else would be pricier than Chi-town, unless of course you're talking about buying "in the hood"!

So, my advice would be to hook up with someone soon that can educate you as to where you're looking and what these areas are really like. Otherwise, I think you're just really spinning your wheels looking at what's for sale and how much rents are without knowing if you're buying in a decent area or a warzone.

Having said that, good luck on your future plans, I do have to say that I admire your ambition for looking to invest elsewhere!

UPDATE-I was having trouble sleeping tonight and saw this thread again, so I checked out your reviews on urbanspoon, trip advisor, etc. NEARLY ALL EXCELLENT REVIEWS! Great job, I know how hard it is to please everyone, all of the time! In fact its funny, but on one of them it looks like there's only one bad review (and its pretty bad!) but it looks like it was when you first opened AND they just happen to recommend some other restaurant in town! Hmmmmmm, I wonder if that one just might be from the owner or staff of the other place, fearing the competition-that stuff does happen!

Well, keep up the good work, it sounds like you're off to a great start!

I'm in agreement with @Mark Ferguson on this, I can certainly see some local bubbles happening, but we've always had local bubbles, often in the same places like SoCal, parts of Florida, etc. We've been through a HUGE correction in prices, even here in Milwaukee, an area that rarely has ever seen prices decline to any large extent, prices have corrected quite a bit from 2008 or so. The new construction market has been nearly dead for several years now, the only people building new were the ones who REALLY wanted to and apparently had money to burn or didn't mind paying a premium for building exactly what they wanted.

Also @Xing Zhu makes an excellent point about foreign money coming into the US market. Remember that even though we've been beaten up a bit lately with all of the talk about being passed up by China sooner or later and whatever other anti-US sentiment there is out there, the USA is still BY FAR the #1 place that people around the world would like to be and is also considered the safest place to invest in things. One big thing for wealthy foreigners to invest in here is real estate. In fact besides being a factor that I think would help save us from a total real estate crash, its also probably a factor in influencing some of these local bubbles. From what I've heard, a lot of the purchases that have revived the Miami market for one, one which was nearly wiped out a few years ago with whole skyscrapers full of condos sitting empty or even unfinished, a lot of that money is coming from overseas. Countries like Brazil, which has been booming lately and making lots of new multi-millionaires and even billionaires, where do you think those people want to not only safely invest and park some of their new-found wealth but also get a second home with that money? Heck yeah, its here in the USA!