All Forum Posts by: Cassi Justiz

Thanks for the mention @Jimmy Ogle!! 

Hey @Toby Johnson, 

When you say you are a little short on cash, does that mean that you are leaning towards a hard money lender or just keeping purchase price low? 

We have some great local lenders, but most of them are still going to require you to bring some money to the deal. 

I'd be happy to recommend some lenders depending on what kind of financing you are looking for. 

I haven't found an exceptional way to determine rental comps as an automated process. Rentometer is helpful if you have the pro account, but it seems like most of their numbers come from Zillow. As fewer people are paying for Zillow rental listings, I feel like the quality of rentometer is going down as well. 

I basically pull the rentometer comps with as tight of a radius as possible and then take a look at zillow for active rentals in the area. Generally that can give you a pretty good idea of what the market looks like. 

I can't help much with the Zillow auto renewal side of things. 

When I post a rental listing, I just have the phone number deactivated all together. Zillow gives you the option to allow people to contact you via phone or not. I always opt to only allow zillow inquiries or emails. The zillow generated phone number is to "protect privacy" and trace the contacts that reach out through the zillow ads. 

As far as the random inquiries that don't fit your criteria, I don't even pre-screen anymore. I no longer do any private showings, so if they want to see the home I let them. I do a one time showing and just invite everyone to come out for that. I have an email template that basically says that I'm opening the house for showings at a specific time and if they are interested they can come by then. We review applications in the order they are received, so here's the link. 

If they come see the home and it doesn't meet their criteria, that's on them. That way you get enough traffic that the interested applicants feel the need to apply quickly and the rest of the people are just extra "interest" to motivate each other. It's worked out well for me since I started doing showings this way. It saves a lot of the back and forth of the "pre-screening" process. 

Something to keep in mind is that a lot of people are buying properties with large down payments and leveraging those large down payments with super low interest rates. I've seen people selling SFH, condos or townhouses in extremely high cost of living areas and using those funds as down payments for "expensive" MF homes in other areas. When you are putting 25-35% down on a MF property and locking in a 3% interest rate for 30 years, your cashflow numbers look a lot better. I've seen a lot of buyers taking the equity from the SF homes they sell and doing a 1031 exchanges to either exchange into multiple single family homes or MF homes.

I would give a little caution on increasing your living expenses to buy rentals. It's a great idea in theory, but it also puts you in a limited equity position on your primary residence should you decide to sell or move in the future. Also, with the increased living expense of your primary, you'd need more rentals just to sustain the cost of living increase. 

Instead of doing a refi to pull the equity out of your primary home, is there a way that you could save up enough to purchase your first deal with a conventional loan OR do a value add deal and then refi out of that? If you can find a good enough deal, you can likely find a private lender that will finance it OR a commercial banker that will loan based on as appraised value. 

Get out and network with the people in your area. They can give you suggestions on how they are buying in your market with little money down. It's possible, but definitely takes some hustle. 

Thanks for sharing your experience! 

I started out in a similar way except the home I bought was turn-key. I kept it as a rental when I moved out of state. It's a great way to get a taste of real estate! 

Are you looking at small multifamily or more of an apartment size? Depending on your rents and unit size, you may want a percentage based structure or a flat fee rate.  

For smaller multifamily, check with @Tracy Streich with Renter's Place or Two Doors Realty. 

I don't have a fantastic recommendation on the larger multifamily property managers in the metro. I'd second what @Forrest Faulconer said and call around and find out who is managing similar properties in the same area. Hopefully that helps! 

@Will Fraser & @Forrest Faulconer, 

I'm glad to see that we are all on the same page right now. It's an interesting time right now. I'm STARTING to see rents tick up now that we're seeing the increased demands from landlords selling off properties and buyers not getting to buy as planned, but it's no where near the increase we've seen in prices. 
I still think OKC is awesome for buy and hold, but it's a totally different market than we were seeing even a few months ago. 

I tell my buyers that are looking for BRRR deals that they really need to consider doing their own marketing. Pretty much anything on the MLS right now is going multiple offers and selling for over list with minimal equity once you factor in repairs.
Wholesalers have a little better margins, but most of the deals they blast out are around 85-90% ARV deals rather than the 65-70% ARV deals you'd need to BRRRR. It's definitely possible with the right systems in place, but finding a BRRR deal is going to require a lot of work.

I'm in OKC, so I can't speak for Memphis.