All Forum Posts by: Jack B.

Maple Valley, Washington which is filled with Boeing and Microsoft employees, has been appreciating like crazy and has good cash flow. I make a ton of cash flow on a 4/2.5 I bought for 300K down 2.5 years ago and it has gone up 110K in value in that time based on CMA. One of the best school districts in the country, and they are quickly running out of land to build.

Honda civic I bought used 6 years ago after my 20 year old truck broke down for good. It has 121K miles (I work in IT so I work from home mostly) and a dent in the hood and bumper. Own about 2 mil in real estate at 34 and make enough money to retire today because I don't live like Justin Bieber.

Although I've had every imaginable disadvantage in life, and stood on my own two feet since 18, I was able to pay cash for my first house in 2011 minutes south of Seattle when I was in my mid twenties. Being frugal and smart with your money pays dividends. 

Can you be more specific? What is the cap rate or coc return %? What is the dollar amount invested? Any appreciation?

If you are buying in Malibu, I suspect your coc return is going to be really low, but your appreciation or total ROI is going to be very high.

I'm curious, do you not have a deposit for this? I've kept almost 2K in deposits this year alone on account of deadbeat tenants who didn't pay their bills or caused damage.

Sounds good on the surface, but then what? I take someone who is likely a felon (most on construction are...) and give them access to a box that has a key to the house. Then what? How do I know they put the key back? How do I know they won't come  back and use the key whenever they want unless I go down there and re-key? What happens if they harm one of my tenants kids sexually or something? I GET SUED.

It depends on the city in my area. At two of my rentals, the bills are held to my property if they don't pay. In fact they can't establish service unless I sign a release to the utility that says I will pay or they will put a lien on my house.

At others, the utilities follow the deadbeat losers that don't pay.

 Quoted for truth.

My understanding is that commercial is valued based on NOI, not market conditions like SFH (I invest in SFH currently but am learning about commercial). Not sure if this was true in the last recession but worth researching. MFH is used to preserve capital as much as it is used to grow it.

People either sell or they refinance when the balloon payment comes due. Personally I'd sell to avoid maintenance issues and use the capital to expand the portfolio. 

Almost every person I deal with wants to only provide proforma numbers of their best case scenario with no capex or vacancy built in. I ask for schedule E and they claim the have only owned the property for 2 years. OK, then why don't you have 2 years of tax returns????? Out of all the times I've asked sellers or brokers, only once has anyone immediately sent the schedule E of their returns. And it was clear then their proforma numbers left out the 20K a year loss due to paying all the utilities. on an 8 unit building in Alaska...

I'm finding the task of finding and dealing with MF investments to be unreasonably time consuming not to mention frustrating and extremely risky. I've gotten used to the ease of finding a house and quickly crunching rent and mortgage numbers to decide yay or nay. A quick inspection buy my trusted and overqualified inspector and basic number crunching of area rents and the mortgage and maintenance expenses, and voila, I have a deal. With the MF, it seems to always be a game of what kind of problem is this clown dumping on me?

Really starting to reconsider investing in MF. If nothing else this summer I will sell several houses and uses the equity to 1031 into exchange maybe 3 for 6. Multi family just seems really risky. As long as you do due diligence I think it's reasonably safe, not as safe as a house, but the problem is the sellers are dumping problem properties and trying to pump up their numbers in the process of dumping them on unsuspecting investors.

I will say this. I have a rental about one hour away and it is a huge PITA. Round trip for a showing (always booked with multiple people) is 2 HOURS not counting traffic. It REALLY sucks. Even when I find a new tenant, I have to go there for the lease signing again, and inevitably people always have multiple issues their first 2 months in a unit, so then I have to go down there to let the service workers in if the tenant is not home, etc. A PM might be OK with this kind of arrangement, where I just drive by once in a while to check up, but otherwise, no way again. And to think I was thinking of buying in Spokane while living in Seattle and self managing. A road trip I figured. Yeah, right...