All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

I don't know the exact number, but there must be about 1 million homes on the market and there are many great deals.

I like the feeling when I can't find a property for a long period of time. The extra time to look for properties gives me time to relax and to do extensive property research, to sharpen my math skills for crunching numbers to compare.

I like to move very slowly to make sure I am always making the best decisions to maximize my ROI. Otherwise, people with anxiety often lose out on a lot of money, or lose all their money.

I will do my research from about 8 pm until 1 in the morning for several months and look at a thousand properties because in the evenings is the only time I get to focus without being interrupted.

Be patient and wait like analligator.

I'm sure you heard of, "too many hands in the soup". The worse thing any business owner can do is relinquish control and that is what happens when you hire a property manager. But, if you must hire one you will want to maintain as much control as you can handle. It is an eerie feeling when someone else has the power to write your checks and you find huge mistakes several weeks or months later. 

We has many units in other states and we actually managed the properties for several years without a property manager. We used real estate agents to rent our units and we dealt remotely with handymen and contractors. It worked great for 10 years. Then for the past two years we hired property managers. In the past two months, we sold several of our out-of-state properties and we intend to sell every one as soon as we can get the tenants out. That does not say much for the success of property managers.

Even though we used property managers, we still paid every bill from our own office. We had one property manager in Idaho totally disappear with $40,000 of our cash she had in her account and suing was out of the question due to distance and costs.

Never trust someone with your money and never give someone else control when you do not have to. Property managers don't have magic bullets and many property managers do a worse job than many of the worst landlords.

Read every book you can until you realize that most of them were written by some fairly lame authors. If fact, most books are probably written by ghost authors who write a book for some wannabe expert and the ghost writers get ALL OF THEIR INFORMATION from other lame books. But, many books have maybe one good piece of advice.

Math is super critical. There are many investors who don't understand and can't do basic math. Knowing how to do simple algebra, calculate the return on investment, create spread sheets, etc. is critical. If you can't do the math then you may have to make decisions based on wild guesses and other lame investors advice. I would not make an investment if I could not do 100% of the math by myself.

Go to every real estate club meeting you can attend. Again, there are a really lot of serious idiots including really lame brokers who don't have a clue about the differences between single family and multi-unit investing and these idiots are telling their clients that single family properties is where the big money is. I seriously feel like punching some real estate brokers for being either idiots or liars.

Never mane an investment decision unless you are 100% positive that it is the perfect deal. Never guess. Never make a decision based on advice given by a broker, investment advisor, attorney, your priest, friend, another investor or family members. If you need to rely on advice from any of those people you are not ready to invest one penny.

Research hundreds or thousands of properties and don't waste your time looking at a property until after you did the math. Otherwise, you waste a lot of time going on wild goose chases. While your investment decisions may change for the better after looking at a property there is a certain amount of wild guesses you can figure out by knowing the neighborhood and seeing a street view picture.

Never buy properties solely to purchase, rent and pay down the mortgage because you will never get rich collecting rents. The big money is when your property value appreciates, or when you can do some improvements e.g. adding a bedroom and bath and increase the value of the property, but this requires many skills that even pros have because they lose money all the time. 

For a beginner, the  biggest profits are with multi-units even as small as a duplex, but as the number of your units increases your profits are exponential.

Well, I need a million pages to finish and have to go back to my regular job.

It is hard to lose money if you don't do anything. You can lose your entire life savings when making one bad decision. Money is hard to earn and super simple to lose. I say this because there are too many people who have real estate fever so bad and they are so blind they think they can't lose money when investing is real estate.

"If it ain't broke then don't fix it"

Sound like you are doing great. Maybe, you are not cut out for fixing up homes and don't let people fool you because I will bet that a very high percent of amateurs who rehab houses lose a lot of money. Everyone knows that cost over-runs when walls are opened can bankrupt even seasoned investors. It what you are doing works, then keep replicating what you are doing and if you fall onto a fixer-upper you are 100% positive about then still think again if you want to take the risk when what you are already doing is working.

Please clarify your reasoning!

In California, the real estate law states that the landlord must provide the tenant with a list of items and costs deducted from the deposit within two weeks after the tenant vacates the unit. If we don't have their new mailing address we have to mail it by certified mail to their most-recent address which was the unit they just moved from. This is a very serious law and landlords will lose their entire case because the landlord failed to provide this list of deductions as required. As the landlord you are ultimately responsible for your management company's actions.

Overall, I never ever worry about threats. Too many people get excited and call their attorney when no case has been filed. It doesn't make any sense to worry until you get served which probably won't happen.

Getting sued is a small part of doing business and don't let small lawsuits bother you. I actually enjoy getting sued because it can be fun preparing for a case and I always learn better ways to protect myself by improving my contract and company policies.

Why not! There are many investors, buying to hold and flipping mobile homes.

Be specific. What is it you don't believe or understand? State your case.

I always say, "if you have to ask the question you are not ready to start a partnership". 

The only good thing a good partnership agreement is good for is for when your partner sues you for everything you didn't think about when you created the partnership.

I never found two advisors, or lawyers, or accountants who agreed about LLC's. Especially, when the LLC's are not in the states you are doing business with. The biggest argument is in regards to the income tax issues. So, be careful when listening to advice because the answer depends only on who you are talking to.

Many vendors, banks and contractors will not deal with LLC's. I currently have an LLC that owes me $9200. They are incorporated in another state and I don't even bother to try to collect the money. I never work for LLC's but I did this job for a neighbor as a friend and got stiffed, anyway.

Are you really 16-years old? Let the behind of your ears dry! Focus on high school!  Study math, real estate and everything you can about taxes. Wait until you have business maturity. Just because someone has real estate fever it doesn't mean he (or she if you are) has the business maturity and wisdom to deal with anxiety and ride the bumps. I am fairly sure you can't get a loan and you can't sign many (or most) legal documents without a parent co-signing.

I got started in real estate at the age of about 13 by doing maintenance for 135 rental units owner by some of the richest multi-unit investors on the east coast. I was always a fly on their wall and looking over their shoulder a they would do their books and talk about business. You can learn a lot about business just by being with successful people even when they are not talking about or doing anything related to business.