All Forum Posts by: Gordon French

With family I have been able to get 7% to 8%. Im currently looking for investors who will loan 10% for 4 or 5 years to cover 10% of the down payments but have yet to find anyone interested. I would love to hear what has worked for others. The down payments are my biggest issue. 

Your post feels like it was written with a lot of excitement and passion. That is a good thing. Issue is I don't know what your actually asking. What do you mean you have two cash buyers? 

Step one will be finding the money to buy your first property. Start working with banks and see what you need to qualify for a loan. Unless your saying you have the cash from the two buyers your referring to. 

Are you sure the PM company isn't just asking that you give them the security deposit. It is typical for them to hold this. They need the money to protect themselves. The wont give it back to the tenant. 

I have never heard of such a thing. 

That is better then anything I have been able to get. 
Mine are all 5 yr notes with a 15 am and 7.25% to 7.8% 

I was just happy a bank finally didn't tell me no. I don't have to get an appraisal or underwriting every 5 years. They charge a loan renewal fee in the $400 range. It takes a few minutes. The alternative for me was not to buy the properties and make nothing.

I went to Amazon and bought a bench/storage container. It looks kinda like a bench but the top opens and the packages can be placed inside of it. This keeps them out of view and keeps the entry door locked. It is sitting directly under the mail boxes. It was under $50. 

Im glad some people in your area are able to help with the pricing side of stuff. I want to hit on a bigger issue in my opinion. You called it a hobby. That is a very bad mind set to start this. If you treat the rental property as a hobby you will treat the tenants like they are friends and as a hobby. This leads to failure pretty much every time. You need to change your mind set before jumping in with such a large investment. 

I believe the single biggest cause of failure in this field is new land lords treating the process as a hobby. It is very much a part time job. You need to run it as a business from day one. 

If the property cash flows well enough to cover the cost of PM then its fine. I personally like keeping my properties. You can likely manage it from a few hours away if you can find a trusted hand man to call when issues arise. 

I rely heavily on facebook groups to rent my low rent properties. They high end homes cause a lot of push back and complaints but the low end homes rent within days from leads found in local facebook groups. 

Twitter is basically dead, I don't both with it. 

The real question I see is can you rent the commercial units? You gamble will be in affording the place until you get them rented. I cannot advice as I don't know the area. I think I would be walking door to door asking the other commercials properties what they pay in rent then compare that to the vacant ones.  Since there are other options.... it means either no one is looking to add a business in that area or those units are over priced. You need to find out which. 

As for the inspect just ask your bank which one that want and call to get an estimate from a commercial. On my business loans that bank doesn't care about an inspection. I actually do all my own. 

I love the deal... your close to 0 out of pocket. I would be all over it, once I knew I could rent to commercial units. 

@Mitch Brunette Im not really into selling. I have been thinking about getting into selling to make some more cash for down payments. I got into real estate for the long hall. My goal was to retire at 55 with 100,000 a year income. I have that... I can likely retire at 50. Until I got to that goal I would not sell. I bought everything based on cash flow. 

I would sell if I needed the cash for a better investment. 
I would sell if I thought the market was going to change and I would loose out on the rents. 

I wont sell because my property has gone up in value. So has everything around it thus I really gain nothing. 

I wont sell a GRM of 5. I work very hard to find those (I have several) and they are basically unheard off. You should see a very nice cash flow from anything in that range. Even with higher risk loans.

I really like towns like your describing. That are more stable to me. The large swings you see across the effect the towns less. However... these owns can fail and are subjected to issues with the city and the few business that keep the town going Buy when the town is low not high after some new business comes in. If your getting the property cheep enough you can survive the lows the town might see.