All Forum Posts by: Daniel P Willis

@Patrick Shawn Faherty for got to highlight your name.

I'm no expert by any means, I've fixed up and rented two different properties now and what I've found is that all the "turnkey" investments seemed to fit two different criteria in my area. The first is that the turn key investment with the stereo typical 10% COC rate of return were 50+ multi-unit/multi-million dollar properties. I believe this is because most people who rent out the smaller 2-4 unit places lack the investor knowledge to price it accordingly and a lot of the time the people who buy are the same so they over spend on the nice "turnkey" investment. The second thing I've noticed is that you have a lot of major players chancing those buy and its done investments, this knocks out all the little investors like me and I'm sure many others.

I guess what I'm saying is that its not that you won't find an investment or that you being to picky, but it sounds to be that you limiting you available options by a lot which means your COC return could end up being smaller. You want a single family home, you want a turnkey investment, you want the house to be $150,000 or less, and you want it to be in a 10% return. I always try and look at my investments from the point of view of the person who i want to rent from me. Do they want to rent a single family home, that depends on if they are out of the price range of a typical family with kids, in some areas i've looked this was the case and in others this wasn't but none the less you've limited you market some, which is fine just so long as you know that its happened. You want a place in the $150,000 range, I'm not sure what real estate prices are in your area but in mine that is not a terribly expensive house. The reason I mention that is because you have to think of how many available houses are like that for one, and how out of the price range of people is that property. If someone has the ability to purchase a house and pay $400 less than rent, most will, of course there are exceptions. The next item is that you want a "Turnkey" property, there are 3 basic values that we, as investors, can add to a property. The first is... money of course, a large portion of the time an investment just takes a lot of money. The second is Time, some investments need some work and you can ether pay someone else to do it or spend the time to do it yourself, the more time you spend the money you have to dish-out. The last is skill and knowledge, a lot of the time if you have great track record people will come to you and bring you their investments so that you can help assist in those and help them be successful.

So you have to look at what your saying with your search, you want a Single Family Home which has a large competitive market due to people wanting to purchase them for residents which means there willing to pay more because they don't care about the investment ability of the house, this in turn drives prices up. You don't want to do any work to the property which is exactly what people with families are looking for, this also drives the prices up. Than your looking for housing that sounds like its in everyone's price range which means you have a very large pool of people chancing the same properties, this means lots of competition, which means higher prices. This is probably why you can not find a 10% COC return, my advise would be to reevaluate what your willing to do to gain this investment. For example, not many families want to fix up a house before living in it, it doesn't have to be a bomb zone to count as a fixer upper, just enough problems someones wife isn't going to want to move in lol. I've also found that duplex and triplex properties are around the same price range as single family homes because the pool of people who want them is so much smaller, there is a great pod cast on this is your interested. Anyway, I wish you the best of luck and I hope this helped some.

@Mylon Jones sounds like a great property but this web site has a form for advertising services and properties, I would post it there because I believe BiggerPockets has rules regarding advertising in places other than that spot. Good luck.

@Mark Yarbough awesome, keep us posted on how it goes!

@Mark Yarbough i think most people are fairly understanding, I would just make sure you let them know in advance and not wait until the last moment and there is a good chance that @Sai T. is right, a lot of times one might not care much at all. You could also choose the unit that needs the most work and give notice to that one and just explain that your doing upgrades and unfortunately you need the unit empty to do that.

@Dan Giungi  I think that that is an excellent question, but I think you're looking at it from the wrong point of view.  Investing in stocks and investing in real estate have two different goals. With stocks the bulk of your wealth is built through capital appreciation as the stocks that you have purchased grow in value so that they can be sold at a later date, yes there are dividends associated with  stocks however these dividends are usually in the lower percentage yield around 2 to 3%. Another thing to keep in mind is that dividends are not guaranteed, though you can find companies such as Disney that have reliably Paid dividends over a long period of time such as 30 years. 

            Real estate can be used to gain wealth in different ways, you have of course flipping a house or property, but you have rental income which is a passive flow of income that comes from renting the real estate property you own.  That passive income is similar to dividends in the essence that you receive money from money that you've invested but different in the yield you should see from your investment, were dividends would yield somewhere around 2 to 3%, on average a rental property you could yield anywhere from 8 to 20% and higher depending on your area and the way you leverage funding.  There are of course so many different examples that you could fill a book, or many,  but the main point that I'm trying to make is that I would sit down and think about what your goal is for the money that you have set aside. Do you want that money to gain in appreciation or do you want that money to bring in a passive flow of income, yes both real estate and stocks will do both however  stocks are more geared towards appreciation whereas real estate in terms of renting is more geared towards passive income. So if you want a passive flow of income I would consider coming up with a solid real estate plan and going from there, if you'd like to see your money gain an appreciation then I would consider coming up with a solid investment plan  in regards to the stock market with stocks and bonds in similar investments like that. Hopefully this has been helpful, good luck and keep us posted on what you decide and if you have any questions!

@Rich Hupper I like to do some stock trading on the side and the company I go through for some of my personal investments is motif.com. 

      The platform is great because commissions are low, $5 per stock purchase, ex. 100 shares of Match Group would be a $5 commission charge. They also have what they call motif's which a  category  Or sector you can invest in, for example if you wanted to invest in online gaming, they have a motif for that. Each motif contains up to 30 different companies and you only have to invest $250 at a time, the commissions for a motif is $10. You are able to create your own motif as well if desired. 

       Downside is that you would want to do your own research as this obviously doesn't have advisory services which is why  commissions are so little, if you're looking for a company that has more of an advisory role than you would want to  look for a company more similar to Edward Jones. Hopefully this helps, good luck.

@Omar Merced it's been awhile sense your last update, I'm sure your busy but do you have any updates as far what's happening now. Are you putting up a gate for your property to detract crime or is it not that much of a concern once the building is finished?

is the property still available?

@Account Closed rich dad poor dad I think is a must because it teaches you how to think and work with money. "Why we want you to be rich" by Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump is a good one because it teaches you about the importance of creating wealth and the shrinking middle class and the effect it has on the country. "Real estate 101" by Donald trump is a decent one along with the ones by Brandon Turner, I haven't read them all but I've read a few and they all were helpful. "Rich dad poor dads guide to investing" and "cash flow quadrant" by Robert Kiyosaki are great. Pretty much anything by Robert Kiyosaki is were I would start because he is an easy read and teaches about money. Reading forms helps to because it's real world stuff going on in the moment. Good luck with your reading :)!