All Forum Posts by: Brian Serina

Brace yourself! Sacramento MeetUP

BP All-Star Brian Burke is flying into the Sacramento Executive Airport to meet you.

February 27, 2016 at 1pm

Mark you calendars and bring your burning questions. Details to follow

@Brian SerinaThanks for the heads up. I have two E Trade accounts. One I manage and the only transaction fees I pay are $9.95 in and out. I'm more of a Warren Buffet type of buy and holder and don't do a lot of day trading, puts, shorts, longs, etc. 

We have also just opened a family trust account that will be set up and managed as a discretionary account. However, I know the broker very well and he will not be moving us in and out of positions without discussing them with us first. 

Plus we're starting out very modestly with him and not moving a large amount of funds into the account out of the gate. I do appreciate your taking the time to share this information with me, however.

I was also looking into REIT's as a possible investment but my E Trade advisor/consultant said you need to be very careful investing in them. You first need to determine if they are leveraged. Many of them speculate with your $$$ and can even over leverage which could cost you on ROI potential if not a loss. Additionally, not all REIT's are that liquid and easy to sell out of.

Not sure if this answers your question or not but here is a "if I were you" response to your reach-out. With $10k~$20k to invest and you want r/e exposure, keep it simple and go with a low cost mutual fund. Consider moving the IRA(s) into Vanguard and you will have all the exposure you want/need in R/E. I have a significant amount of $$ in their gnma fund VFIJX and also their reit VGSLX for my r/e exposure and you will get a nice mix of all of the r/e categories (office, hotels, shopping centers, health medical centers, etc). But as any investor knows, diversify. And then you can take weekends off, go on two week vacations and when your friends ask what do you do, you can answer you invest in office skyscrapers and shopping centers :)

We have been in situations where the buyer cannot get conventional financing because the property was too beat up, or because of excessive vacancies the current cash flow would not cover the debt service.  Alternative financing would allow a deal to move forward and the two most common types is a hard money loan with usually a high down (50%) or seller financing.   If the seller is in a high tax bracket in the year of sale, an installment sale could be a consideration to alleviate the concern of potentially higher taxes.