All Forum Posts by: Chad Miles

@Jake Thomas thanks for the reply! That is a good point, my trepidation with that is that I really want to get to know multi family apartment buildings and the process of buying, selling, and managing those the most rather than residential. Do you think becoming an agent would help me with that? Why or why not? 

@Jonatan Nir another property manager that I have not personally worked with, but I have personally met with and does a lot of work in the area is @Stewart Beal from Beal Properties www.gobeal.com 

It's that time for me to leave my current job in IT for a huge company and pursue my passion: real estate. While working on my investing company on the side, I want to gain relevant experience in the industry through a real estate related job. 

My company is currently pursuing investment in multi-family apartment buildings and I know that I have a lot to learn. So what is a better way to learn that experience it directly through work experience? The question is this: what real estate related job should I pursue in the mean time? 

That is where I turn to the BP community. Here are some of the things I am looking for in a job: 

1. MONEY. The whole point to have a job right now is to gain experience and also to gain capital for my investments. I am looking for a job that can pay some decent money so I can continue to save.

2. Control over that money. Preferably, I would love a situation where I can directly control my income through bonuses or commission pay. I am willing to work many hours and will work harder than most, but I want to be rewarded for that time/effort. 

3. Flexibility. The more flexibility I can have in a day job the more I can pursue building my investing business on the side. 

4. Networking. The whole purpose of finding this job is that I can learn and also grow my network so that when the time comes, I am ready to go into my own business full time and will have plenty of contacts that I can utilize going forward. 

5. As complete of learning as possible. This means that I am looking for something that can teach as much as possible about all aspects of the buying, selling and management of multi family apartment investing. 

Based on these things, what kind of job would you recommend that might check at least some/all of these boxes? I am looking to those with experience in these specific fields to shed some light on how it has helped them in their own businesses, or, if you could go back, what field would you choose to work in to gain experience? 

I am from Michigan in the metro Detroit area so maybe you even work in that area too! 

Thanks for your time and input in advance, 

Chad

@Parker Ihrie thanks a lot for the response! You provided a lot of good insight and things for me to think about. I think that I do have the benefit that I am young and I am also in an easy position to cut costs and take a pay cut in order to gain more experience that will help in my business in the future. So I am in a good position and am very willing and able to leave my job. Since I am also young, as you mentioned, I am thinking that I could spend a few years gaining experience in different aspects of real estate so that I am more well rounded. Then I know all aspects of the acquisitions, financing and management. Thanks again for your comments!

@Ubaldo M Gomez thanks for reply and sharing your story! I think you had some valuable advice. Kind of as you said, I feel as though I am in the right time of my life and want to leave my job to pursue real estate. The question being, should I continue to try to push through and slowly build the apartment investing business, or take advantage of what I know and focus on smaller 2-4 unit buildings and build some cash flow while learning more about apartments? 

Hello BiggerPockets!

Let's call this a... re-introduction. My name is Chad Miles I have been a member on BiggerPockets for a year or two now and have participated in some discussions and learned a ton. Now, I want to reintroduce myself and also gather feedback from a more experienced community on the course of action that my brother and I are currently on.

To back up, my brother, Evan Miles, and I are 23 and 21 respectively and currently each own duplexes in the Metro Detroit area of Michigan that we "house hack" by living in one side and renting the other to pay our mortgages. We love multifamily investing because of the reduced transaction costs and benefits to having more units in one location. We are ultimately interested in going into multi family apartment buildings using a syndication model and have spent the last few months making connections in our area and assembling a team of contacts that we can utilize in all steps of our business plan as we purchase value add apartments.

As we have gone down this road, we have realized a couple things including: financing is a much different beast for commercial loans rather than for standard residential mortgages. Finding investors that trust and believe in you can be difficult with a lack of experience or track record. Utilizing a syndication model has many nuances as far as who can invest and how deals and LLC's are structured which plays an important role. The more we research and listen to people with experience, we hear that there are always deals to be found (even in this stage of the cycle) and the most important thing is that we "buy the property right". The problem lies in that statement; as first time investors, we lack the knowledge base to know that we are "buying properties right" and to make sure that our numbers are sound.

In essence, we have learned that we still have a lot to learn... So we are thinking that we may pivot our course of action over the next couple of years in order to learn more about the industry and gain some first hand experience that will be crucial as go into business ourselves. Here are the three main things that we see ourselves doing over the next couple of years in order to position ourselves best to successfully plunge into our business when the times comes:

1. I currently work in IT at a large company and while I enjoy it, my passion lies in real estate and this job does not help me to gain experience that I can then take into our business. I plan to leave my current job and seek employment in the real estate industry. My question to you is this: What job experience do you think would be most beneficial for me? taking into account what we ultimately want to do. I have heard people coming from brokerage, property management, acquisitions, etc. to going into business for themselves. Maybe a combination of a few of these! What background did you have before starting your own investing business and how did it help you?

2. We are in real estate investing to put our money to work and earn residual cash flow. If we do not feel ready or totally comfortable with the multi family apartment space, why not focus on something smaller that we know well? Duplexes. We want to spend the next couple years acquiring as many du/tri/quadplexes as we can so that we are still putting our money and building wealth as we also build our knowledge base. This also can give us more of a track record when the time comes to get financing and gather investors for bigger deals. I have feeling that as we do this, we will become more connected in the real estate community and maybe start to gain connections into the larger multi family space. 

3. Lastly, we still want to get into apartment buildings because of the scalability of that business model. Our goal is to spend the next couple of years seeking opportunities to at least be a part of large multifamily deals in some way. Whether it's bringing money to other larger more experienced investors in exchange for the experience of being part of a deal, volunteering our time and skill sets in order to help make investors lives easier in exchange for some of their time or knowledge, or maybe something else! As an experienced investor: what would you want from us in order for you to take the time to walk us through deals and help us to gain the knowledge and experience that we need? We are young and have time and drive on our side, but of what help can we be to you? 

If we combine these three courses of action, we hope that when the market takes a foreseeable dip in the next few years, we are then ready to take advantage and pursue our own deals with knowledge and experience to back us.

What do you think of this plan? Are we taking the "easy way out" by not continuing to push through and pursue larger multifamily deals at this time? Do you have any answers to our questions or advice to us based on your experience when you were at our stage in your career?

Thanks for your input, we value it more than anything and appreciate everyone on this great community!

@Carson M.thanks for the suggestion!

@Christian Hansenthanks for the suggestions! When you say they should go look at the property "periodically", how often do you find is normal? And does that mean stopping by the property and inspecting the outside of it and the grounds, or does that mean also going in individual units?

@Stewart Bealthanks for the response Stewart! I have sent a colleague request since BP does not allow contact info posted outside of the marketplace. 

@Jeff Copelandthanks for your reply Jeff! Based on your experience, what are some of the "normal" fees that they might charge? What fees do you generally try to negotiate because you feel they are excessive? 

@Phil Earleygreat point Phil! The last thing I want is to have a management company provide me more headache... Do you find you generally get a "feeling" about them based on an interview that leads you to believe they would be a good company to go with or not?