All Forum Posts by: Jay Orlauski

One question: will his either his property insurance or loss of rental income insurance cover this?

I agree... while I have found it easy to ditch the TV , I have a very hard time letting go of the internet - that being said - I watch what I read with a skeptical eye and try to interpret what is really being said.

Funny thing .. one of the stocks I'm tracking had different levels of buy ratings and over the last year , the stock has acted exactly opposite of what the talking heads said it would do. Almost like they wanted to snatch it up themselves and talked it down when convenient . I remember thinking - sure glad i don't actually listen to these guys.

where stocks are concerned , I look for good dividend paying stocks and have found some real gems - generating 18% + monthly.

Beginning to wonder if I should look at some foreign investments. BP oils spill provided a good opportunity to pick up their stock at 30% discount - I try to stay on the lookout for events that temporarily drop the stock.

It looks like silver and gold are having a bit of a runup right now so it may be a little late to jump in , but , I will still be on the lookout for junk silver - i have picked up many pieces of stuff other people don't want - just recently( about 3 months ago) we acquired over 12oz of pure silver cause nobody else rumaging through it was interested in it ( it was in the form of some dirty tarnished goblets and tea pot- nearly black) after cleaning what we suspected was silver , we saw the engravings that marked it .999 % silver.

I looked up silver and it was like 13$ an ounce - not too shabby - but now with the run up as of late - those pieces are suddenly becoming quite the find. I am hoping to come across some other pieces like that. Maybe I can my next property with it :)

wow, thank you everybody for your thought provoking responses. I plan to stay with real estate and learn as much about it as possible. So far I have only bought properties for rental income , and did one flip, but would love to learn more about other aspects of real estate - I'm a little interested in notes.

as far as precious metals, we have collected silver coins over the years mostly as collectables, but now they seem to 'pulling their weight' so to speak - very glad we got them when we did.

@jon - as always your responses are tempered with levity and logic. Whenever a question is asked by anyone , it's your response I look for first and usually am not disappointed.

so theres been a lot of talk about the devaluating dollar , china pulling out of the us bond market and a whole array of fear inducing headlines slipped in just below justin beiber and bristal palin updates.

There is a lot of talk that the real estate market will stay down for another two years, meanwhile silver and gold are supposed to skyrocket as the feds fiat money starts get exposed for what is it - a house of cards.

I was wondering if anyone is buying silver or gold and if anyone thinks real estate being down is good thing ( a chance to accumulate income producing properties)

It's getting harder to determine where to put assets for growth and safekeeping as it seems things change so fast now days - it's tough trying to figure out which investments will stay relevant. Ask some people and they will tell you to invest in seeds, ammo, and silver - but is it realistic to expect those investments will actually pay off? ( well, silver probably will)

when I was a kid , I thought everybody was going to head to the hills and become survivalists cause the atomic bombs were gonna get everybody and the world was going to be total anarchy everyman for himself.... now it is terrorists/bankers/NWO or whatever other unseen enemy is scaring off / rigging all the investment vehicles.

Guess I'm just wondering what else some of you are hedging your investments with other than real estate....

jay

quick update .. the property appraised for $30K less than the agreed upon price. At first I was really disheartened , figuring the seller would run as FHA would not loan on it - but the seller dropped the price by 30K and the deal went pretty smooth. Now that we've had it for a couple weeks and met the tenants - we are still very please with our investment and our incredible luck. Been waiting for the hammer to fall, but so far everything seem to be in good order. There is certainly some deferred maintenance we would like to address , but nothing that is urgent or cutting into our immediate cash flow.

this is a great exercise , I remember we did this in college and it really helps to break down what your TRUE goals really are and can lead you to realize that you are attempting to accomplish something for the entirely wrong reasons or that there are better ways to get to your ultimate goal.

another concept that was in a recent class talked about decompiling your goals from the end and work backwards to the beginning to map out your steps.

If your main goal is to develop a certain amount of income via rental properties, than you have to own a certain amount of them, to own them you have to acquire them , to acquire them you have to find them and fund them , to find them you must search blah..blah ... blah... to get the money you must ...... blah .. blah .. blah .. until eventualy you get down to your first step.

of course , just like algebra , you may want to walk though it forward too just to make sure it still makes sense. Each step then can become a small attainable goal.

we set the goal of getting this property when we were in dire straits and knew that the only way to pull ourselves back out again was to become property owners once more. We made a five year plan with indications of where we would like to be at the end of each year and how we would know we were there. By staying focused on each of the smaller steps - the larger goal simply comes together by design. It's the end of "Year one", and we have our first investment property ( after having none for 4 years) just as we had planned and are now taking steps towards our second one which we are hoping to acquire within a year to a year and a half.

Collecting rent was a one time deal, but I helped with maintenance around the house and she went to college ( as an elderly woman) to study construction - she drew up plans that the city approved and I would help build or paint or anything else she needed - it was not something that happened full time or very often , but I jumped in when I could and usually remember back to something I learned from her whenever I'm working on properties.

One very valuable lesson I got from her was to not buy cheap crap. She would never blow any of her money , she had it accounted to the penny. But when it came to buying tools or anything else for that matter, she generally spent good money to buy quality goods. It took me many years before I realized the value in it and wasted a lot of money on cheap crap before I decided that my grandmother had the right idea all along.

we've seen the insides a few times .. this was supposed to be the final walk through .. more of a formality than anything ..my real concern was handling children. My first instincts are to stay away - but was wondering what other have done in the past - like what if i was supposed to have plumbers there to tear out the sink .. and the only person home ( after a 24 hr notice to enter) is a child?? things like that could put us behind schedule.

Hi everyone,

just wanted to share an experience I had today and was wondering if I could get some feedback from some of you.

So I announced a while back that we just acquired a triplex after several years of not having any property. everything has closed and we became official owners two days ago. We gave our tenants 24 hr notice that we would be there onsite to go through the apts.

First door I knocked on - a little half naked kid opens the door - says his mom is not home and shuts the door fast. After a few minutes it is clear that mom is not home. A second unit had the same scenario - kids but no mom - though this was an older kid who said she would call her mom.

I felt like I was ready to take on anything and any issue they could throw at me - but I've got to say - that kid really threw me off.

I was not comfortable entering the unit with someones children there and chose not too. I was wondering how some of you handle situations like that.

My grandmother inspired me. She owned and rented a SFR and one day had me go there to collect the rent. The concept that a normal person can own a house that other people will pay you to live in clicked in my head and has been burning like a flame ever since. I have always attributed my love of real estate to that very day.