All Forum Posts by: Bruce Woodruff

 I  am a contractor , and I would get inexperienced "investors" ask what type of discount they get since they are "investors" ?  

Thats simple       None 

So far our non-investing, fellow Wisconsinites are voting to keep the bar, but update it and then create a game room. Some of you mentioned everyone staying upstairs, but this is actually a walk-out basement which where you would enter the indoor hot tub room and exit to the outdoor pool. The door in the first picture is the tub/pool exit. The basement is likely where most will be traveling if the pool will be in use. 

 My time is valuable.   I charge a lot for my time, but I freely provide guidance on this site and to certain other people (I have enough that do not need to be compensated for anything).   I do not get bothered by not getting an upvote as much as I am bothered when the person who asks for advice contradicts it or does not value it   I am not saying it is common, but it does happen. 

If they already “know” the answer, why are they asking the question?   More shocking is when multiple people tell them the same thing yet they are convinced they know better.

One of the worse cases was a person in my market who had not achieved a good return on his RE.  It was a small sample size (2), but they had chosen to invest unleveraged.   Because my market is a high appreciation market and poor cash flow market, the leverage is more critical to accelerate the return than most other markets.   This was pointed out repeatedly, but he wanted to ignore that his method of RE investing was stupid for his (my) market. Because his RE did not produce a good return, he tried to convince people RE was a poor investment.  The reality was he is a poor RE investor that does not understand the numbers so he achieved a poor return.

I see it often on underwriting on sustained maintenance/cap ex.   I have maybe been told a dozen times my allocation is too high.  I typically respond asking how they derived their number.   most do not answer.  Those that do basically state they used no numbers to derive their estimate but they tell me mine are too high.  It is almost funny.  Your numbers are too high.  How did you derive your numbers?   I saw other people use it or the calculator I used defaulted to that percentage.  I cannot make up these responses.    at least they did some underwriting, but no effort on justified maintenance/cap ex numbers.  So their underwriting is as good as their inputs that were not good.

Another flagrant case is @henry Clark was helping a newbie to create a self storage facility.   Henry provided detailed instructions, but for some reason the newbie would ignore some of the guidance.  I would have gotten frustrated by the second time my advice was ignored and stopped providing the wonderful guidance Henry was providing.

I had a protege that I was providing free mentoring that ignored some/much of my guidance.   It was frustrating but the protege is doing OK in his RE investing but would be doing better if he had followed my guidance.

After the last BPCon I offered to walk a few newbies through my last purchase including the numbers.  I am up ~$1m above costs on this investment.  I gave these people a multi hour window to show up.  One person drove by after the window. If she had stopped, she would have found that I was still there and I would have walked her through the investment and the plans to complete the value add.   No one else even drove by.  I do not make these offers often, but when I do it is surprising how few take advantage of the offer (and how few of the ones that do that I ever see any resulting action).  Fortunately my first protege has been successful enough that it provides sufficient positive reinforcement for my efforts (he is getting close to 8 digit net worth).

My time is valuable.   I charge a lot for my time.  When I give my time for free but the guidance is not valued, then I do not desire to give additional guidance.

Best wishes

While I agree about greedy, stupid, I'm-never-at-fault buyers coming here and trashing mentors/agents/teams/etc., I have yet to hear of a mentor/agent/team/etc. turning an investor down and saying "No, you're not ready."

A pox on both their houses.

 Ignoring what we can't control (general societal sentiment) what can we do HERE on BiggerPockets to fix this obvious cultural problem with posters here on the website?