All Forum Posts by: Chris Masons

Diversification is key... For a beginner to deplete there IRA or 401k to take a shot at RE is a very risky proposition as you are trading professionally managing index funds or whatever you may be invested in to a beginner with no experience.

I would say keep your IRA and or 401k and save after tax dollars to invest in RE. After a few deals and you are seasoned comfortably and you want to pull money out of your retirement accounts go for it.

People have learned very hard lessons in RE whether it be flips gone bad due to inexperience, or rentals gone bad due to bad properties and or tenants, you don't want to learn these lessons with your retirement savings.

What if you pulled out 50k or 100k of IRA money and invested it at the peak of the market in late 2006 early 2007? The aftermath would be ugly.....

Just my opinion....

Chris

Good luck on the rehab!

Looks like you got a nice buy for 56k!

Chris

Jesse,

there is an old saying that goes like this.. You make money in Real Estate when you BUY not sell. IOW, buying at the right or wrong price makes all the difference... Generally speaking it is difficult to make money paying retail as the return usually isn't there... (if it was a lot more people would be doing it, right?) You need to find a DEAL.. Sometimes this is easy but most times this is difficult and not readily out there jumping out at you saying BUY ME, BUY ME!!!

Once you buy right (toughest part - the acquisition) than you work on making things work in your favor IE. manage very carefully, have a network of people to turn to who will not rip you off assuming you won't be doing the management yourself.

IF you can fully manage and do repairs yourself than that is even better as you won't need to give up this portion of expenses which will in turn boost your return so you are a step ahead.

Watch your property very carefully, and be even MORE careful about who you rent to. 

Just randomly buying a property and hoping to make a nice return is definitely not the correct way to go about this...

hope this helps,

Chris

Hi Joshua,

Any reason you are targeting East Orange specifically? That area is not the greatest area and if you plan to self manage from afar it may keep you busier than expected....

best,

Chris

Lots of great advice here.. I invest heavily in Real Estate have roughly 25 doors and they all throw off nice cash flow..... I take a fair portion of that and guess what I do with it? I diversify and ionvest in stock market as well..

Why? to protect myself. Nobody is perfect, we ALL make mistakes, good investments can go bad. Real estate markets and rental markets can crash as well.. Agreed one has more power and influence over owing a hard asset such as real estate. However, Owning stock in companies that are run by amazing CEOs such as Apple, J&J,MO,KO, DIS,O is in my opinion a great way to build wealth as well. These are all very shareholder friendly blue Chip companies that pay nice juicy dividends that if left to compound and grow can snowball to figures unimaginable...

These CEOs are much smarter than I will ever be, why not take a piece of the pie and own what they believe in?

Roth IRA is a home run in my opinion - as is investing in rental properties at a young age....

great investments combined with time (lots of it) = wealth

regards,

Chris

WOW!  Surely they were arrested after trespassing back into a dwelling they were legally evicted from right??

Rebecca,

CO stands for Certificate of Occupancy..

regards,

Chris

I Feel there is some bad advice in this thread...

You should give them proper notice and start eviction proceedings, PERIOD! In many states family needing to occupy a currently rented resident a perfectly legal and valid way to ask someone to move out.

Trying to make tenants life living hell is a mistake in my opinion because guess what? they can make yours a living hell 10 fold more than you can make theirs...

they have nothing to lose, you have property, income, time Etc. to lose.

Do everything legally and you shouldn't have anything to worry about from an eviction standpoint...

I have been here before..

good luck,

Chris

I have investments in Unuon county primarily Union township. I know this market very well and am very comfortable here. I generally shoot for a minimum of 14% cash on cash return.

There are deals out there you just need to know your market and know where to look. If you can get with a realtor who is investor friendly It will be a big hep.

Good luck

Chris

Hii Philippi

Welcome to BP! While I can't make direct comparisons to NY or Connecticut I can say the compared to PA, NJ is definitely a bit more challenging to get a decent return on your invested capital. This is true for many reasons but the two biggest in my opinion are cost of properties and property taxes. Both are considerably higher in NJ as well as insurance.

That being said, this is not to say you can't get a good return in NJ you just may have to look around and be more picky. I live and invest in NJ and investing out of state is something I have no interest in.

Thanks and good luck! Are you looking to invest in NJ or out of state?

Thanks and good luck

Chris