All Forum Posts by: Casity Kao

@Louie Pullen Congrats to your friend and I can appreciate the concern. I am not sure of your background in real estate or financial wealth but why is your friend soliciting your advice? I liken it to the financial advisors starting out from college for Edward Jones trying to get people twice their age to invest their money with them. There are plus and negatives to real estate investment companies but I would say the biggest thing is you will have much conservative gains but they are truly passive. Now with that being said I can't tell you how often I see large companies swallow that I would not touch myself because the returns are horrible. If your friend wants a passive income and be in real estate another option they may consider is the NNN lease with established tenant market. Simply the more time your friend is willing to spend to manage their investment, especially into getting the knowledge the invest the greater the return they can expect but best of all that knowledge compounds and finding invests gets easier.

@Andrew Kerr Those are good points as my lawyers interpretation is similar that it could happen but they do differ from lawyer to lawyer which ultimately it is what is a judge to think.  It is a lawyers job to ultimately think as conservative as possible.  In terms of “safest” approach I would rather take the approach I stated above versus doing a commercial loan likely with a 5-10 year ballon and 20 year amortization by going commercial route as I think the risk of loss is higher being in this type of financial product versus having the business ownership questioned in court but I respect that view.

@Account ClosedThe greatest loss is the time you already lost.  You can do it!

@Michael Ehmann

You can do one of two things.  You can either waive the buyers agent commission.  When we have done this we offer for example $100,000 in then specifically put buyers agent to waive $3000 commission so seller realizes there is a savings of $3000.  This would work if your office has a high split, because you may bring 3,000 into office but keep only 50% of that.  Keep in mind your broker may not allow this but our did in past.  We prefer to offer with buyers agent commissions however, because I want the units sold on my record and also it helps getting bank financing at the end of the day because its income you are putting on your tax return.  Also this is a factor of the splits you have with your broker and how you negotiate them. Some brokers only have a per transaction flat fee, some have high splits but no ongoing. Some are flat monthly.  I'd figure out which broker fits your needs best.  You may want a lot of hands on support for a lower split or you may be established and want to do all of our own marketing to take home as much as you hunt for.

@Robert DeForge Never be uncomfortable telling your mentor you are uncomfortable with a deal for whatever reason.  If it really is a deal and they said they would buy it themselves no big deal.  I wouldn't make it super length but short and sweet.  We have been in the same situation just recently where have tried to expand into investing in different asset categories and there were no hard feelings.

@James Wise So did you relist it as a "cosmetic fixer upper." ;-)

@Account Closed  Welcome Rose.  Stay focused and concise!

@Brian Wert I am not sure how homestead exemptions work in PA, but in Michigan you could do a 50% homestead exemption.  Over here the homestead exemption normally lowers taxes by about 40% if you do a 100% exemption on the whole property, so I'd figure half of that.  Best way is to call the city, because they will tell you how your exemption is setup and tell you if you set it up correctly.  You may find out you have no exemption setup when you should have in the first place.

@Luis Cruz  Have a value proposition for what you can do to help your target market.  Be mindful what everybody else is offering. For example many newbies offer to buy coffee or lunch for a sitdown, but maybe offer to bring food for the construction crew and the investor at one of their jobsites, so you help them get on the good side with their crew and also save them time traveling to and from a meeting.  Lastly it benefits you because you get to learn "on the job" instead of in the library.  My husband had a no show for demolition at one of his houses so he offered two newbies to help him fill up dumpster during a cleanout.  He budgeted 3 hours of cleanup for the job, but the newbies helped him get it done in an hour and 20 so he took them out for dinner and gave them the rest of the time saved.  Be the value, don't explain it.

@Jonathan Pflueger  With the small banks be prepared that you may have more difficulty getting access to things like online banking and absolutely do not make anybody mad.  We have a bank where the person who took the loan application, was also the underwriter, processor and loan closer, and we referred a client of ours to him that pissed him off.  Needless to say, he got a loan but they did not make any exceptions for him.  This same bank, has the worst online banking and they did not have bank statements only payment vouchers which was hard for other lenders requesting complete statements.  Just keep that in mind that it's not always gravy on the back end, including access to pull funds, which is one of reasons why we sometimes choose large lenders.  The other thing is make sure the deal makes sense for the bank and lender as well.  If they do not make money, and decent money then they will not like you.  I had a loan product get approved where I knew I would be closing out the loan product due to the sale of a home in only 2 months and after figuring out they were only going to make a few hundred dollars not including labor after their fees to close the loan I asked them to charge me for a broker price opinion and closing fee, which they originally were not. The financial institution was so impressed we were concerned that they were taken care of, and that because of my banking experience I knew it didn't make sense for them they almost always take a second and third look at any deal we send to them and hear us out when we explain why it works for them.  I know that sounds extreme, but if you really help people they will help you out.  Lastly, a lot of people reading this are going to ask me who these lenders are that give us some awesome financing, and my answer to that is, you can call every bank in your state every year like we do, or you can become our client to have access to our list, but we don't give that for free;-)