All Forum Posts by: Colin G Murphy

Hi @Haidee Hammond

Firstly, as an Irishman living in Spain (Madrid), I can completely emphasise with your predicament above. If I could get a solid return on investment in Spain or Ireland I would have invested in both places years ago. Plenty of people are doing it, but they are either happy to take low returns and/or have inside knowledge that I don´t. 

As it turns out, I´m able to get far higher returns and at much lower purchase prices in Tampa Florida, so I have been having fun building a portfolio there plus buying, renovating and selling turnkey properties to investors.

Secondly, I wouldn´t place too much importance on all these vague rules of thumb (50% rule, 2% rule) because they are mostly meaningless. Wherever you choose to invest, you need to do some proper research and get a very solid handle on the typical fixed and variable costs for landlords in that area. For example, closing costs, property taxes, property management fees and insurance costs all vary wildly between Spain, Ireland and the US. Trying to estimate these costs by deducting a fixed percentage of the gross rents or the gross purchase price will get you nowhere. You need the real numbers and you need to put them into a spreadsheet.

You seem to have a good idea of market rents and mortgage repayments for apartments in Dublin. Next step is to find out taxes, insurance, community fees, maintenance fees and average vacancy rates. Speak to some local agents, read the daft.ie reports and try to track down a couple of experienced landlords. It´s a worthwhile exercise, but you´ll probably come to the conclusion that buying apartments in Dublin 2 is not a good way to generate a strong monthly cashflow. 

Same goes for Malaga - property prices are very high compared to market rents - that´s just for long term rents. Don´t even get me started on how fickle the vacation rental market can be down there. A lot of landlords are sitting on cash flow negative homes in your area.

I want to end on a positive note. It´s great that you are keen to build a rental portfolio. It is the best way I know to build wealth and generate passive income. If you put your mind to it you can be a successful landlord ANYWHERE YOU WANT. Keep working and don´t give up. Everybody hits a wall from time to time - the successful investors are the persistent sons of b*tches who keep moving forward no matter what.

Hi @Christopher Zito

We have used Sherwin Williams a bunch of times in the past 12 months. Ask for Linda and feel free to mention that Colin from Torcana introduced you.

Hi @Account Closed

Seems like you got some great legal advice on checking the authenticity of these potential partners. In order to drill down a little further and find out if they are the best potential people to source and manage property for you, I would ask the following questions:

How long have you been a property manager?

Do you personally invest in real estate in this area?

How many units do you currently have under management?

How many people in your office work in property management?

What is the average length of time it takes to fill a vacancy?

Can you send me a copy of your property management agreement (i.e. for landlords)

Can you send me a copy of your standard lease?

What is your late rent policy?

What are your management fees?

What do you charge for recruiting new tenants and renewing existing leases?

Do you charge for monitoring and maintaining vacant units?

How do you market your properties?

How do you screen prospects?

How do your tenants contact you?

What do the landlord reports look like and how often do you send them?

Are you able to provide two references that I can speak to? Ideally investors who have multiple properties with you.

Then I usually finish by saying something along the lines of "Thanks very much in advance and apologies for all the questions! 

You´re very welcome @Jon S.. Keep us posted on your progress and best of luck.

I have been using Jan Doughty since 2008. She has been wonderful. They are particularly good at handling tax returns out of state and overseas buyers. 

That is a very specialist market. You could approach large commercial brokers like Knight Frank, Savills and their Portuguese equivalents. The seller will have to prepare a very detailed prospectus to get interest from prospective buyers.   

Hi @Kyle D.

There is no easy way to find a 5 deal package of 3/2s in Pasco County that is competitively priced. You´ll need to work and network to find it. Suggest you go to a few REIAs and contact both commercial and regular investor friendly realtors with clear search criteria. Keep your eye on auction sites and for sale by owner listings (Zillow/Craigslist) as well. 

Finally, spruce up your BP profile - put in a photo and description of who you are and what you do. Nobody emails good deals to strangers.

Best of luck.

Hi everyone

I recently moved a handful of rental properties into a Series LLC. I won´t go into the pros and cons of these entitles as they have been covered extensively in the BP Forums & Blogs.

However, as Greg Boots wrote in a BP article a few years ago, the idea behind the Series LLCs is a great one: put all similar assets into a Series LLC to cut down on costs of forming multiple LLCs to protect them. The flip side is that these are newer entitles and there isn´t a lot of case history of investors successfully defending their assets from creditors using a Series LLC.

I knew this when I formed them and was happy that the benefits outweighed the very low risk that I would get successfully sued by someone AND the local state courts would not recognise that my individual rental properties were legally segregated.

Unfortunately, not all specialist lenders are happy to accept that risk. For example, both B2R Finance & First Key Mortgage have policies of not financing Series LLCs. The brief feedback is that their legal departments won´t green light Series LLC applications because this is a new entity that hasn´t been fully tested in court yet. On the other land, Lima One Capital are happy to offer finance as long as the assets of the Series LLC are in the same state.

If you have been using the same lender for years and are considering forming a Series LLC, make sure you check that they are happy to finance them before diving in.

Finally, if anybody knows commercial lenders that offer competitive rates for long term rental property financing in Florida, please PM me as I´m shopping around for one! 

Hi @Michael Schueler

We purchase properties from wholesalers, auctions, FSBOs etc and then fix them up before selling on sell turnkey to rental investors. 

We also partner with other wholesalers, so if you have a good deal with enough meat on the bone and need a partner to help finance, refurb and resell, then keep us in mind.

The http://www.facsold.com/ website doesn´t seem to work.