All Forum Posts by: Glenn Espinosa

Kyle M. - If your agent isn't trying to get you the best deal he can and is instead trying to ease his workload... it may be time to sit down and set things straight, or look for a more investor friendly agent.

Totally understand the regret from that one...

As for me, I would have gone to college for what I really enjoy - business, real estate.

I have never worked with them before but I do know Lima One Capital in Georgia has a rental loan package that could be something worth looking into. I don't think they operate in Texas though...

I've done a lot of reading lately on capital growth vs cash flow, and time leverage.

A lot of it depends on how fast you want to be totally passive and whether or not you even need passive income in your life right now.

Jeff Brown talks a lot about the issue in BP blog posts as well as his personal blog. Very interesting stuff and he makes a very compelling case for increasing your portfolio at the cost of reduced cash flow for better long term results - again dependent on your goals and where you are in life/retirement.

Hey Jeffrey! Welcome to BP and good on you for deciding to get your finances in order - real estate is a great choice.

As for recommended books, the questions has been asked hundreds of times and a quick search of the forums will reveal a lot of threads with great book lists.

Heres a thread I found in a matter of seconds: http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/79/topics/66243-what-are-the-best-re-investment-books-you-ever-read

My suggestion: Read all of Gary Keller's books, you can't go wrong with him.

Glenn

Jeff S Did the neighborhood have existing home sales of comparable properties in the $800k range? Or was the new ARV derived from avg sq ft.

I ask because I have thought about that exact strategy but decided against it because of my fear of neighborhood price ceilings. I don't want to be a 3,000 sq ft mcmansion in a nice neighborhood with avg sq ft of 1,800.

I do know of one BP'er who has had success breaking previously established neighborhood price ceilings. Check out Tom Tarrant. He lays out his deals on his blog and he's done that exact strategy in his market. One key takeaway that I got from his blog is that that particular strategy best works in gentrifying areas. Also, once he has broke the ceiling in a neighborhood he continually targets it since he created his own comps per se.

Glenn

Brandon Turner Please don't start that trend. I already left Reddit because of cats!

Welcome to BP, Ben! Love to see other young investors on here. Keep us updated!

Are others adjusting their margins in order to stay in the game? I read somewhere on BP that the ideal adjustment would be to stick to your buying criteria, keep looking for the 1 or 2 real deals, and to keep cash at bay until others start to fall off...

Obviously this all depends on your goals, but there have to be some investors who are choosing to stay out of the market due to the increased competition.

Welcome Jeff! I love to see other young investors on the forum. Keep at it and let us know how we can help.

Have you exhausted your free resources and taken action on the information you gained from them?

Until then I wouldn't even consider any of these guru programs.

In 1 month of reading probably a dozen REI books and spending hundreds of hours on Biggerpockets, I was able to make my first real estate deal. Cost of education? Probably less than $200 if you factor in the BP subscription and the books I bought.

Found a few little bags of the green stuff hidden in a closet. Didn't pay too much attention to it, some of my subcontractors did though...