All Forum Posts by: Daniel Dietz

@William Powers, I and my two partners all set up SOLO401Ks with Sense /@Dmitriy Fomichenko. Could not have been happier with the service. They did a great job of walking us through all of the paperwork and understanding differences between the 'provide' (the paperwork) and the 'custodian' (where the monies actually are). I would not hesitate using them again.

My other advice, IF you chose not to do business with Sense would be to talk to some of the 'smaller' providers like some of those that contribute here in the forums. Before I chose who to use I contacted almost all of them that chime in here along with a few of the 'big boys' and ALL of the small ones seemed to give more personal interest  in me as a potential customer.

Dan Dietz

@Dmitriy Fomichenko has a good point that $600 does not seem "like a business". He is also my plan provider and I value his opinion :-)

With that said, I do have a friend who was in a similar situation as you and had a large IRA he wanted to roll over to a SOLO401K to avoid the UDFI tax issue. He rolled in the mid six figures over. He works a W2 job in construction management as a 'day job', but started doing it as a a self employed side job too and set up a SOlo401K and puts almost ALL of his earnings in it each year in addition to what he rolled over.

The difference, I think is that he makes about 5-10K per year, and works for multiple people who change each year. He also set up an LLC to run this in. With those things in mind, he used KKOS for legal advice (this is one of their speicalties) and they said it should pass with flying colors

Not sure Dmitriy or the other pros would agree with that assessment or not?

Thanks for the update @Mindy Jensen.... I was getting a little nervous - in the middle of negotiations on 4 different properties :-)

Thanks, Dan Dietz

I would second checking our Rentec Direct. We use it for 30 units and growing and it works great for us.

The only things I have heard that it wont do is a balance sheet type situation. To us, that does not matter as our tax guy takes are of all that and depreciation for us. It give us all the reports he needs to do his thing.

Dan Dietz

It would have been nice to know that the calculators were going to change so drastically so we could have run whatever reports we might need over the next few months  while we got used to the new one.

Is there a timeline on getting it working correctly? Also, a couple of what I feel are critical features are having the 'inflation rates' for income, expenses, and property values. Along with how we used to be able to 'scroll' over the graphs and get a 'year by year breakdown'.

This is one of the main things I pay my Pro price for, is there a time line to get things fixed? @Mindy Jensen or @Account Closed

I would agree with @Chris Mason. IF there is a reason that you want to stick with this loan officer, you could *try* the approach I used to take with our local building inspector who thought *his* opinion mattered more than what the "rules" said on our construction project we do.

He would tell my customers that "you need to do it 'this' way or 'that' way" which often was not accurate to what the code says (being a licensed contractor I know the code pretty well).

I told my customers to ask him "can you show me in writing what covers this issue so I can better understand it". Literally 4 times out of 5 he would say "go ahead how you were planning on doing it" - meaning that there was no rule, just *his* thought on how it should be.

Ask the loan officer to show or explain what rule covers that.

Dan Dietz

I use Fastpeoplesearch.com. It works good for when you have a persons name, although it gives you basically every number they might have had in the last 10 years ;-), so you need to just work the list. I have yet to find a way to get a phone number for an LLC.

Dan Dietz

I have been using the BiggerPockets Journal to work on my Real Estate goals, with one of the main ones being to find more quality 1-4 unit rentals in our ruralish area where not much comes up on the MLS.

So, I drive around and find ones that look like something I would like to own, and find out who owns then and give them a call to see if they are at all interested in selling. I track in all in the Journal.

So, after 78 calls over a year, I probably actually talked to about 30 or so people. Of those 30 3 of them are at some level of interest in selling at a price that makes sense on my end too. Of those 3, 2 were interested in Seller Financing. I mentioned it to the others as "If you would be interested in doing a Seller Financed deal I could help you save realtor fees and have a great income stream, or if not I will just buy it conventionally".... meaning not to say that is what *I* want, but that it *might* be something to help *them* out.

The first one ended up going to someone else who was cold calling at the same time and was willing to pay 10-15% more than I was. The one I am working on closing right now that is the ONLY way he wants to sell..... No realtor commission, spread out takes and stay in a lower bracket, and a steady income stream for 15+ years. I should add that he does not need this income or cash right now... it is basically being snowballed for later in retirement.

Moral of the story is keep plugging away, and try to make 'the pitch' about how you can help THEM out, IF that is something they would consider.

Do you have the means to do it without seller financing if needed?

Dan Dietz

When I first started I used UDirect for a SDIRA and was happy with them. When I opened a SOLO401K also (along with my two partners) we switched and used @Dmitriy Fomichenko from Sense Financial who I met here on BP and have been very happy with his service. We use 'checkbook control model' for both of these. They are then 'partners' in a 3 way LLC made of of just Self Directed accounts.

What I found when I contacted various providers is that I felt the 'smaller' companies like Sense, UDirect or others who contribute here such as @Brian Eastman, @Carl Fischer ALL seemed to give a more "personal level" of interest/service than the 'big players', which to me is an asset to them.

Dan Dietz

I would second what @James Wise says with Rentec Direct. We use it for 30 units, that happen to be under 7 different ownership entities, so we use the PM version. It does everything we want for accounting. We have our tax guy take care of balance sheet, depreciation and stuff like that - It might do that too, I have just never looked.

It also has great PM features, such as one click listings, late notices, text or email blasts, maintenance database, etc....