All Forum Posts by: Matthew G.

@Henri Meli startups are a different breed than regular businesses where cashflow would be king. The intent is to grow exponentially and shift consumer mindset, so they spend as much money as they can raise to increase staff, market, etc. Uber burned through $2 billion last year, but along the way they made a huge shift in people's mindset about transportation. These crowd funding platforms are trying to do the same thing, they have to spend a lot of money convincing people that this new way of investing in real estate is the future. It may not have even been a profitability issue. If some of their other metrics were lagging, like how much new investor money was coming in or how many repeat investors were funding deals, venture capitalist might have seen that as a red flag that they were hitting a saturation point.

@Brent Tatum you might have to get creative in how you target distressed homeowners, there isn't exactly a "distressed homeowner" demographic you can select. Facebook has three targeting categories: demographics (life events, relationship, education, etc.), interests, and behavior (digital activities, purchase behavior, etc.). You could create a campaign looking for people who have a "separated" relationship status that live in a specific area. This could mean they haven't divorced yet and haven't split their assets yet. You could also target an area with a specific age range, so you can target older homeowners with more equity. If a stock market crash is coming, you could start targeting people who work in the financial industry. Keep up with what events are happening throughout the country that could negatively impact people, and you can update your campaign to target those people.

@Cedric Van Duyn I know a lot of apartment complexes have signs of the towing company they use, so that you know who to call if your car was towed. You may want to have a sign up if it is a recurring problem, if not just have the car towed if it isn't one of your tenants.

@Marisa Aceves If you have a day job and can't cold call or do marketing activities during that day job, then that could be a reason to outsource a lot of things in the beginning. Also some people are just better at networking in-person vs cold calling, so they outsource the things they don't want to do. Is it worth it to do in the beginning? Depends because a cold caller is only as good as the script you give them. If you make a few calls, never get a deal then decide you will outsource it, what makes you think they will do any better than you? If you do it yourself then you can get feedback and adapt your pitch to get better over time.

@Account Closed I don't think you can replace in-person networking with any online tools, but looking for new technology and software to use for marketing purposes or communication with clients will help set you apart. If you look at the brokerage company, Compass, they are revolutionizing the brokerage industry because they have a focus on technology. In their app, they created a pinterest for real estate properties that their agents and customers can use. The agent and customer can add properties and make comments and chat on each of them so you don't have confusing email chains or text messages not knowing what property they might be talking about. Check out https://reinvestor.tools, this might give you a start in some tools for real estate you might find helpful. Just keep in mind that your greatest tool is networking.

@Stephanie Cristiano I've never invested with Realty Shares, but have worked at tech startups. Most have about a 6 month runway for operating at full steam. If they cut down their major costs likes engineering and marketing it can easily extend their runway much further to wind down operations. Keep in mind they raised over $100 million from venture capitalist, so they might still be searching for someone to acquire them so that the investors can get some of their investment back. Since there are numerous crowd funding platforms, they are probably waiting to buy them for cents on the dollar so they can have their investor pool of data.

@Will M. I think what's important is making sure the numbers work out to where you are comfortable and not forcing them to work. Run your numbers for multiple exit strategies. If you planned to fix and flip, but can't sell because the market corrects, then your calculations should have also taken into consideration renting it out with positive cash flow. What you will find when the market gets close to the top are that these deals that make sense are much harder to find. As long as you stick with your calculations, you don't need to just sit and wait.

If you look outside of real estate though, the stock market has become much more volatile with big daily swings. It's possible a correction to the stock market is coming soon, so you may want to include that variable into your opportunity cost. If you purchase real estate today and the market slows down or dips and you have to hold on to your investment, is it worth missing out on purchasing near the bottom of a potential stock market crash.

@Kenneth Brown try going to local real estate meetups to network. You can probably find hard money lenders or equity partners that would be interested in working with you. If you have less experience, you might want to joint venture with someone more experienced so that lenders will be more receptive to you when you have a good deal.

@Sam Rust I've heard a lot about Podio as a CRM and project management tool. It has integrations with Zapier that can be used for automation. You can also check out https://reinvestor.tools which has a lot of different software recommendations that can be used for real estate investors.

@Account Closed what's the focus of some of the startups you have been seeing around your co-working space?