All Forum Posts by: Joseph Hoot

I see now.  I was thinking they were separate.  But I'm just re-looking at the loan documentation on that now and see what you are saying:

I think I have everything I need.  Thanks for jumping in quickly @Ethan Atkinson. 

@Ethan Atkinson - I know you're in the Athens area.  We will likely need to talk with you more once we finish moving our primary residence down to Alpharetta and begin to start investing in Athens.  Do you happen to know any title search companies in the Alpharetta area that you'd recommend?

@Chelsey Hamill - Although I'm still new to this game-- sounds like you are too-- one thing I've learned from the BP podcasts and these forums is that you have to be outgoing with real estate investing.  What's the worse that can happen if you call someone and ask for the information?  Maybe they don't answer you?  or hang up?  

I have called both residential and commercial listing agents to ask them for more detail.  In order to try to not waste their (or my) time, I make every attempt to keep the email or telephone conversation as concise as possible.  I find everything I can about the numbers first-- go to rentometer.com, zillow, trulia, redfin, mls, etc..etc...  Between those sites, you can usually find most of what you're looking for.  Then, I estimate my own numbers using some defaults.  I use similar ones that @Adam Bartomeo uses. However, I am typically a bit more conservative and estimate a little higher on the CapEx. Overall my numbers usually still work out to be about 50% Income vs. expenses-- the 50% rule. Sometimes you have to check if their are HOA dues and things as well. Then, I call the listing agent and try to find out things like rent, who pays for utilities, what are the current rents, where there any new updates done that I should be aware of, such as roof, windows, driveway, HVAC. And then I always ask if they are aware of any glaring repairs or updates that will need to be completed soon.

I also agree with Adam in that most realtors aren't going to bother too much.  But I've received at least a 40-60% positive response in hopes that they can make a deal.  From their response, you can usually find out what else you need to do to your numbers in order to give you a better/more accurate estimate on the property.

A friend and I have been talking about similar things and using arcgis to plot the information.  I would also be interested if such a site exists.

I really like rentometer.com.  But I ended up using up all my FREE  queries.  I would love to find a similar tool that is FREE or has reasonable rates

I have a similar interest, but closer to the Roswell area (interested for handling investments and personal taxes).

Looks nice! I can't seem to get the numbers to work out for CoC. I keep ending up negative. but other numbers seem good. Cap rate seem around 6%? And the GRM of about 7 seems to fit with the b+, c-, I think? What are you assuming for vacancy loss, repairs, cleaning, CapEx, inflation?

Congrats on our fist purchase regardless of any numbers though.   besides gathering knowledge, the next step is always to take the plunge.  And it looks like you did that!

@Deborah Moser , Inuse "property evaluator" from realesttetools.com.  What I do is create a "portfolio" for "investigations" and then a new portfolio for "offers."   Finally, you can keep a separate portfolio for "property owned."  You can easily add the properties to any of the portfolios at any time.  And they can be in multiple places at once as well (if you wanted to show what you offered first prior to purchasing"

@Stephen Franco

@Stephen FrancoThanks for your input. I am interested in buy and hold (mostly). So my comp investigation is really only to help me understand if I would be overpaying or not. Additionally, if I'm looking to make $100/month/unit or >= 10-15% CoC, that might force me to only be able to offer 1/3 of what their asking (not in this case, but some that I've analyzed just don't work unless my offer price is extremely low). In those situations, I really want to have the confidence that I can talk with the agent (, for example) and show him or her why my offer is so low. I definitely want to get the lowest price I can. But I'm not looking to screw anyone (not that you're saying that). I just want to have evidence to backup my offer. I don't have an agent license. So my access to the MLS is the same as anyone else's without a license. I currently use a combination of zillow, trulia, redfin, MLS, and loopnet. I might also use rent.com, rentometer (but my free queries ran out), and apartments.com to investigate rents. Do you have any other sites that you would recommend?

As for the LLC. I probably don't need it at the moment. I only have it for liability purposes. Since I'm just starting out, I doubt any bank would loan the LLC any money. I'll have to take out the investment loan on my own person for now and then figure out a way to transfer the title to the LLC (not sure if this is done during initial contract, or if I just need to pay for title/search-type fees later and transfer it to the LLC). I've contacted a couple of lenders here in the Buffalo, NY area (for now, since that's where I am for the next couple of months) and confirmed my options are 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30. 30 was at 4.785% (it was either.785, or .875). That was a month ago. And I believe rates have dropped another 1/2 point since then. But I'm not sure what the lenders are offering in GA right now.

But given a rate of 4.5% or so, do you (or others) believe it is better to take the 30 and let the tenants pay down your larger amount of interest in order to allow you to have more cash on hand for downpayments? Or do you think it is better to take out a lower year term (maybe 10 or 15) and push the principal down more quickly in order to gain access to your equity through a HELOC or something? I'm kinda conflicted on which way to go. And at the moment, I really only have enough cash on hand to purchase one or two properties. After that, my downpayment money is gone and I'd have to find another source (not sure a hard money lendor would lend to someone with very few properties under his belt. I think a private loan through a credit union may work. But even that is limited).

@Jack Tuckergreat input!  Do you know if there are any sites that show a heat map of property classes?  Or, do you know of any sites where I can pull the raw data and feed it into a program like ArcGIS?  I'd be interested in seeing that data if it exists.

Thanks for chiming in @Ethan Atkinson.  I will be sure to touch base shortly.

With regards to the financing "10yr vs. 30yr" does what I'm saying seem sound?