All Forum Posts by: Ray S.

"Now that we are getting divorced is there a way to protect this house and my grandma's investment?" Did you give a Note and Deed of Trust to your Grandmother, If not I would.

"Secondly, I'm an investor so between now and the time the divorce is official, how can I continue to buy/sell properties and keep her grubby hands off of them". Maybe your Grandmother needs to become an investor. She can be the owner of an LLC or as an owner of a landtrust.

I would try to settle with your Wife at all cost. She knows what you have better than anybody.

Nicholas, everything Aaron said was right on the Money in my experience. Since I live in Houston we have bought properties all over your area. I think you should consider strongly your area. There are still discounted properties left over from Katrina and there are many properties in your area that are in the same price range. Condos make sense but you have to be smart. Distance is dangerous. Good luck

At 45k, this property does not appear to be marginal at all. I think if you are a beginning investor, start in your own backyard. Buy the 45k unit, pay way too much to rehab it and learn a lot. Thats exactly how I started.

First of all Joshua, thanks for all you do, but (the but takes away everything before it),

Some earlier comments that reflect my cynical perspective.

"There's a lot of us, and a lot of old school investors, just doing deals and not spending all of our time texting on our smart phones. Work on getting the best and the experienced here"

"It seems to be a marketing gig designed to encourage constant posting. Should you actually have something more important to attend to in your life for awhile, the "time decay" factor appears to decimate your score. So it looks like it's focused on driving site traffic."

Joshua you are in the ring and all of my respect goes to you, the contender, but, I dont think anybody who is knowledgable and a regular contributor needs their numbers to drop. Bad business. They are the Golden Goose.

Since this is a forums area, then the real value to the forum is CONTENT. People know content when they see it. Preserve the purveyors of content at all cost. If a poster is serving 5 to 10 for racketeering or buys a 450 unit rehab project doesn't mean his influence should drop, just because they are out of circulation. Both can probably deliver golden eggs.

IMO Forget influence, who knows what that means anyway. Change it to "Content Contribution" or Contributor. Use a scale of 1 to 5 when they vote. If they are a noob then weight it as such, if the voter has more knowledge then give the vote more weight(still a popularity contest).

Incidentaly I see the button that says VOTE. What am I voting on? Popularity? Friendliness, knowledge of the subject. Are the votes i get factored by the knowledge level of the person making the votes?

Hi Dori, In most states the property manager has to be licensed. In Texas for sure. We are property managers, but we didnt really start doing that for others until we had about 30 houses or so. Also I don't charge more because I am licensed, but because that is the market fee. In my experience the market kind of establishes what the price will be. As a property manager I see my problem as not the going rate (8 to 10%) but how to systemise our processess and build in better effeciencies. Thats how we make more money.

I should be better at getting a place rented faster, for more money, and reducing turnover than someone who has just a few units or limited experience. I am much less likely to waste time/money doing things that won't work than someone who has limited experience. There is an advantage to having done hundreds of leases. If you have to make all of the same mistakes I have, plan on losing a lot of money.

Another issue is making sure we are complying with the rules. We have been doing this business intensly for 20 plus years, and I am telling you, it's hard for us to stay on top of all the Rules and Liabilities.

One final thing, if all things are equal no matter if it's a plumber, realtor, or whatever, always go with the licensed people. You always have more leverage with a licenssee than you do with someone who doesnt have anything to lose.

Hi Tenisha, when I started buying houses we bought them in the wrong area's because they were easy to buy. That should have been my tipoff, but no, I was smarter than the market. At the same time another friend of mine bought fewer but only in good areas. We were just beginners. It turns out that he made a lot more money, did a lot less work and had a lot less grief than I did. Hopefully you learn from my mistake. I can't tell you anything about Detroit other than what the numbers tell me. In each of my post I suggested a strategy that would work except your origninal numbers were marginal. You never inquired about the strategy, so I am assuming you understand.

Just recently in my carreer I have begin to really understand what the market numbers mean. Thats what you should be looking at. Like are values going up, is there an oversupply. Look at the office and appartment and housing occuapancy, building permits. THere is also something called the hotness ratio. Learn what that is. The numbers dont lie, people do. Finally my theory is have a plan. I have seen a hundred plans that rely on niches that work, no matter what the experts think. In my opinion Yours could work if it involved whotailing or a wrap, no personal liability/instititional financing. And your spread has to be better.

Nick here is the secret formula that about a million people already know. You have to get out of the stands and get on the playing field and expect to get knocked down.

If you were in Houston and you found a deal, I would either give you the money or partner with you. Dont belevie me come down here and find a deal. If I am willing to do that then there are people in your community who are willing to do the same.

This requires networking. Most real estate is local, so even though this site is great, you have to know who the players are where you are. It takes me about 10 minutes to figure out if a deal is good, just like a million other people. Now once you find one of these people who have done this before, (maybe half million people), it then takes them about a minute to say yes as long as it works for them.

Okay maybe I am exaggerating, but there are a lot of people who will partner or loan money and you just have to go where they hang out and make some friends.

By the way in my experience the real money is figuring out to hold on to things. Thats where becoming an expert in partnerships will make you a wealthy person.

Hi Tenisha, probably the last place( no real knowledge on my part) in the world I would think about buying marginal properties would be in Detroit, because they might go up in value. Two miles from where I live, they have the largest construction job going on in North America. Where do you think you should be buying? Also the numbers you first presented won't work and you have to change the deal or Whotail. I am not sure if you know what that means but it can make your original scenario work. I will explain if you need me to.

Chris you stole my thunder, We manage about 50 properties for others and we have about 50 properties or our own. I have heard this many times that an investor/property manager would fill his property before his customers.

Not only do I think this is wrong, I know many Property managers that dont own any properties and none of them play at our level, Most of them don't know the property code like an owner does and they have never made mortgage payment on empty houses like we have. if your not playing for keeps you just don't compete at a high level. We have the advantage because we have real life perspective. Also when a person hasn't played for keeps like we have they don't understand how little things like getting mls listings wrong or having a voice mail instead of a person answer the phone can make a difference. Also as an owner your perspective is about success as an investor, as strictly a manager it might be how to maximize fees.

I dont think I can do him Justice. He died a couple years ago but he was a major influence in how we run our business. Basically he bought the kind of properties that allowed him to have the kind of tenants he could work with(blue collar). He then put the burden of taking care of the house on the Tenants. I remember in his lease it started out something like "Pleaes read this carefully, this is not a normal leas...." It then went on to spell out how they were not going to take care of you, that you were going to have to take care of yourself. I have seen where if this concept is not started from the beginning you end up dealing with the most minor issues. All of this hurts the bottom line. We as much as possible adopted his policies on these kind of things. For example the deductible, he was very militant about this. If you position it right you can not only pull this off, you can even beleive in it also.