All Forum Posts by: James Masotti

Natalie -  If you're looking for tips on just getting started out I would start off with the Ultimate Beginners Guide, especially since it's free. You could also check out @Brandon Turner and @Joshua Dorkin book How to Invest in Real Estate. 

I also suggest spending time up front having a lot of very uncomfortable conversations with your business partner about how you're going to divide things up. I know it sounds great to say he's going to do the rehab and you're going to do the design, but what about taxes and bookkeeping? What happens when the construction person wants to go on vacation in the middle of a project? What about if someone is injured, or worse, and cannot carry out their responsibilities. What if one person wants to keep going and the other person doesn't? What about one person having personal financial hardships and wanting to pull money from the company when the other person doesn't want to? These are all very real things that happen in business. You don't need to think of all of them because there are lots of attorney's who have spent a ton of time in court dealing with these issues. The basic operating agreement from the internet will keep you compliant with the law, but it wont actually save your business. 

Anyway...I'm overly anal retentive about that stuff plenty of other people will tell you if you have nothing to lose than just go for it...but it's also easy to forget to go back and talk about those things once you start seeing success.

 Heather - In my opinion flipping is about options. Not that you can't flip in Elkton, MD or Oxford, PA but you're going to have a much larger potential buyer pool in and around Newark, DE  and Bear, DE. If you're new and getting started and don't understand the dynamics of flipping in a market that doesn't have the right balance of supply and demand to benefit a flipper (in my opinion this is the case in more rural markets). Once you get comfortable with your market to understand the specific development and sub developments of your local area that have high demand and lower days on market than the broader community, then you can do some targeted flipping. My gut tells me at this point in the cycle though, there are already probably local people who have figured that out and are doing it making it more difficult to break into.

Not sure if this is helpful or more confusing so let me know if you'd like me to clarify anything.

I largely echo @Donte Handy regarding checking out the DelREIA facebook page. That having been said, if you're willing to use that money as a standard 20% down payment than I would look at the side streets coming off Market street where BPG is redeveloping downtown. The closer you are to Midtown Brandywine the more pricey things will be and then the further south you go down market prices will drop until you get closer to Chase and the waterfront. There are also grant monies available if you get into a redeveloping project in this area, but  it's just a matter of what you're looking to do

Are you doing a double close or assigning your contract? What specifically are the closing attorney's telling you that they wont do as part of these transactions? 

If you want to connect with more South Jersey investors than you should start coming to our monthly South Jersey BiggerPockets meetup :-P

Set your keyword alerts for South Jersey here on BP and then shoot a DM to @Justin Eaton and he can add you to the email list as well. Usually get ~30 people out to an event.

When you say investor friendly lawyer, what do you mean? What services are you specifically requesting from an attorney for which you are not having success finding someone? Lawyers are rather specialized so once I know better what you're looking for I might be able to provide a recommendation

 Cannot share on the forums. Send me a DM and I'll give you some details. 

Check in with First Colonial. They are the ones that a lot of South Jersey investors use. If you're looking for a LOC though you should also shop around smaller national lenders and national credit unions.

@Kiran Kumar - I'm with @Rob Beeman and @Blaine Brown. I invest in Wilmington and regularly cashout refi in less than 6 months with my credit union. Now these are properties in an LLC and therefore commercial loans. If you're trying to do the same with properties in your personal name and a residential loan I don't know if they'd still permit the refi.

Always looking. If you have anything feel free to send me a direct message.