All Forum Posts by: Max Drizin

Bryan, speaking from the other side of the same kind of parent, I can absolutely say that with much love to my mother, I couldn't possibly live at home again.

She's a great person and I love her to death for everything, but I can't agree with Jeff that I would want to live at home. I'd rather spend the money and get my apartment, worry about investing later.

That being said, I've positioned myself so that I can live away from home and do whatever real estate work I do (between brokerage and investment, I end up doing everything), and I'm thankful for that.

Well, I wouldn't agree with Homer.

I would say that since you are living in it, a lot of the investment tools that I would use go out the window. Cap rates and everything else are gone, and it has some more intrinsic value as an owner-occupied.

If the comps are right, you have a decent price with you right now. It's under not just the value but also the prices around you, since houses aren't selling for the values they were years ago. You should look at appreciation in the area, with websites like http://neighborhoodscout.com/ (with which I'm not affiliated, but I do love) and see what area appreciation is, and whatnot.

If it needs the work, and you don't plan on doing the work yourself, you are probably underbudgeting, especially since a lot of contractors will quote people higher, and you can't much get around that unless you make them know you are serious.

You don't have figures about rents, apprecation, location, or anything, but since it's your house and you are living there, it's hard to say. The asking price might make sense right there, I can't be one to say. Maybe subtract your estimates and try that price.

The only thing I would worry about is that when you go under 100k, it's a real mental block for people. It makes no good sense, but the difference between 99k and 100k is huge, it's between six figures and five figures! People don't like it, simple as that.

Just be careful if you really like the place, because you can pretty easily turn off a seller with too lowball of an offer.

I'd say it depends on what you mean by commercial. If we are talking multi-unit residential properties, then there is definitely something coming up. There is still a huge backlog of foreclosures, and those all have to fail first (which many will).

Single-family homes went through foreclosure first, as people who owned multi-unit usually had some cash flow or reserve money to keep themselves afloat for a little while before they lost the property, so while you might have "missed the boat" on the residential stuff, the commercial properties are coming fast.

It depends on a lot of things. Your rent, where you are looking to move and when you are looking to move, and so on all play a part.

If you wanted to buy, would you be able to make a down payment and qualify for a loan? Would you be able to sell the place down the road?

If you have limited job prospects around your area and you were looking to move within the next year, I don't think that I would necessarily buy the place. It might end up being cheaper to rent, rather than go through the attempts to sell.

That being said, I've never worked in mobile homes, so I don't really know how they appreciate, how much more you could get when you sell, or how long they take to sell, and so on.

I'd start in somewhere where you can make that money into your down payment. Something seller financed if you want to go that route, you could probably stretch the money towards $50,000 in property depending on the seller.

Honestly, at those prices, you'll have an issue finding the deals that aren't in the warzones. The sad part is that those sorts of warzone Section 8 areas can make you a lot of money if you get lucky, or they can be the death of you (quite literally) if you try to collect rent yourself.

I started my second deal as soon as the cash was available to start it. I found that things moved a lot faster, I was a lot less hesitant to make the calls I had to, and it was just easier.

I was a ton more confident, especially when I was talking to agents. I started my conversations with "I just bought a 9-unit, went from seeing it to closing in about a week, cash with no contingencies, find me the same properties and we do the same things."

It worked well to get agents actually interested in what I was doing, it kept them from wasting my time, because they knew I wasn't going to waste theirs. I walked into meetings with sellers, financiers, and agents with a lot more confidence when I was backed by property and experience.

Today, I'm working on over doubling my portfolio, and I'm in a rush to close on about 80 more units by mid-August, when I go back to school. I don't want to travel back to Milwaukee to go to a closing when I'm back at school.

Google Voice is a great service, I use it all of the time. It syncs well with my smartphone (Android, of course).

Not only is it good for international calls (extremely cheap compared to carrier rates, and I make far too many calls to Canada), it's good for people you don't want to give your real number to.

If you are using your cell phone, you have to be in 3G coverage, basically. There are issues with call quality, but I've never had it be so bad that it's unusable. I give it out on a regular basis to people that I don't want to give my phone number to.

Visual voicemail is also wonderful. I like just reading my messages. It's not the best voice transcription, but it usually works well enough to get the point across.

Also, making calls from your computer is always nice, if a novelty at some points. Also, things like ringing to certain phones in certain hours, so that it calls your home and cell, having people say their name and then accepting the call based on that, and a ton of other stuff do make it useful.

I'd say use it. It's free, it gives you a number in the area code you want, and it works.

I'd say that if you are looking on MLS, it's no wonder that there isn't a good deal. The good deals never make it to MLS, they are in your personal connections that you've made in the business over the years.

I've mostly seen people work with flips to get some cash together and get into their rental business.

Seller financing can be a godsend in many cases, even if you end up paying a little more, it keeps you from relying on a bank, which is dangerous unless you have a good relationship with a local bank, especially in today's financing climate.

As much as I hate flipping single-family houses and duplexes, a few flips can give you enough money to exchange into a property that you want to hold. Even looking at this thread, lots of people started in flipping, and it's not the hardest business to get into. It's definitely still risky, but the investments are usually smaller amounts and you aren't holding for a significant time. If you are confident in your business, a good hard money lender can get you the capital you need when traditional money isn't available.

My apologies, I just looked into what my issue was, and I wasn't reading it correctly. I assumed that the capital expenses on the first page, over the years, were just inflated from year 1 and inflation wasn't calculated, rather than having them input otherwise.

One of the pitfalls of not really looking at the equations everywhere.