All Forum Posts by: George Wines

I recently used Denver Lending. They were easy to work with and closed in a reasonable amount of time. I shopped around at 3 different lenders and they had by far the best rate.

@Anthony Chara ahh. Thank you, I didnt realize the information was hidden to people outside of the meetup group. I will join to find out.

@Anthony Chara - I went to your meetup link but didnt see a location listed for this meetup. It sounds like there is some sort of rotation. Could you reply with the location here?

@Liam Goble This is a thought provoking article. Love the MMM shout out. Here is the 4% article you were talking about. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/29/how-much-do-i-need-for-retirement/

I think your best shot of this is to find some smaller REIT fund in the stock market that invests in only the Denver area. You could outright short the fund, but there is the old adage...the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Or you could buy an out of the money put option on that fund. If you are thinking there is some big swing about to happen, this would be your best bet. You would have a fix downside (option expiring worthless) but a potentially limitless upside. Im not sure what sort of timeline you would be betting on this swing to occur though, it sounds like this is a long term bet.

I wont be able to make it to this one, but look forward to the nex

Thanks @Jean Bolger. I saw the HOA fee in the MLS listing of those downtown parking spots, so I assumed that it was associated just with the parking space.

Calling a towing company to evict/no fixing toilets is a huge plus, but definitely will have an effect on the cap rate.

I went to the HOA meeting last night at the high rise I just bought the condo in. Although there are a couple steps the board needs to go through to be able to legally list the spots, one being a 67% vote of the home owners, they feel confident that they will actually sell them. There are 14 that will be up for sale and they are currently renting at $100/month. When the question about what the list price should be, the board seemed in agreement that a 7cap should be used as that is the industry average (at least according to them...I wasnt able to fact check or question since I was just a listener). So they plan on selling each spot at $17K...which isnt terrible (better than stocks/bonds) but isnt great...no improvements can be done to raise rent and their cap rate doesnt account for vacancy. Either way, I though I should post it to the community in case other people wonder about parking spot pricing in Denver.

@Jean Bolger thanks for the MLS update. I didnt know parking spaces would be posted on there. Was there an easy way you filtered for it or did you just use a less than 100K filter?

65K plus what looks like a monthly HOA fee of ~$60 is outrageous. I need to check out what a spot in that area would rent for, but I find it hard to believe that it will rent for something that is even close to making that a good purchase

@Scott Trench - you are right that the $10K is theoretical. Since they arent actually on the market yet, Im not really sure what the spots will go for. There is an HOA meeting tomorrow for the condo building that I plan on going to so I can learn more about where they are in the city/county of Denver lawful sale process and how much they plan on selling them for

Let me elaborate on these particular parking spots. The building is surrounded by 130-140 parking spots. Most of which are already owned by the condo owners. It is only 10 or so that are owned by the HOA and potentially up for sale. I dont know if these are consecutive spots, but I dont think there is a possibility of segregating these spots and improving on the land. With that said though, I do think you are right that the highest and best use of land here in Denver would be developed land.

@Matt M. - thank you for the recalled figure even if it is a ball parked number. I hope that is the downtown price and DU would have a lower one since I would want a +10% return to actually go after this sort of deal (partly because I havent done this before also because I havent seen anything on BP about this sort of style of

@Joseph Graeve - I think you are spot on about the tie to inflation...in a way this sounds like real estate without the leverage/appreciation aspect. I would look at these spots more as a cash flowing business or annuity or bond since it would have semi regular payments. I dont know if leverage is possible with this sort of thing either. Worst case, my plan was to take a loan from my 401K if the return looked good enough against other investment vehicles.

I appreciate the feedback guys

Although most of these discussions are centered around renting/flipping/building/liens, I thought I would ask the BP community about renting parking spaces. I am in the Denver area and just purchased a condo in a 125 unit building. When I was under contract, I went through all of the HOA documentation during my due diligence period to make sure that I wasnt likely to get a special assessment or have my dues raised. In that research I saw that the HOA owns 10 parking spaces in the lot surrounding the building and is talking with the City and County of Denver so they can put them up for sale.

Since this building is very close to the University of Denver campus, the current parking spots are renting around $100/month. Renting a parking spot sounds very straight forward and I believe that this complex's HOA covers the snow removal and resurfacing of the lot. All the other lots aside from the HOA owned ones, are currently owned by people that are condo owners. I believe that parking spots wont be considered liveable space, no toilets, etc and I think that any car that parks there without right could just be towed.

As I see it, here are some simplified the numbers.

rent - 100/month

vacancy percenage - 10% (conservative)

cost of towing - I dont think there is one to call the tow company. I thought they collect from the towee

Theoretical cost of $10,000

Yearly ROI - (1200*.90)/10000 = 10.8%

Things I dont know: 

loans for parking spots

general metrics or rules of thumb for parking

the law

Is there something that I am missing? Does this sound like a good idea? Why hasnt this been discussed in the podcasts (or at least I didnt find it)?

Questions about the law would be if can you rent to people who arent tenants in the building and how does towing work? I am considering towing the equivalent of eviction in the event of non-payment or somebody parking there that isnt authorized.