All Forum Posts by: James Mc Ree

Check out Consumer Reports for ratings and watch holiday sales for prices.

Jim.

You can certainly be an investor and an agent.  A lot of people are.

As an agent, you will have certain responsibilities to your broker and clients.  You will need to be aware of conflict of interest and follow the laws pertaining to CA real estate agents.  Beware of conflicts of interests, for example.  There's no issue if you are a real estate agent and want to buy a property, for example, but there is a big issue if you submit an offer on behalf of your buyer, then undercut the buyer with an offer of your own on the same property.  You can save some money and have better information access as an agent than non-agent.

I don't think you gain any more credibility as an investor who is a professional real estate agent than any other career.  The seller is going to look at the offer and care little about the buyer except for his/her ability to close the deal.  You may encounter resistance from buyers/sellers if they perceive that you have "an edge" in the process .  You may also get more requests for unfavorable prices because you are making money on the deal.

You might gain an advantage if you can market yourself as an investor friendly real estate agent.  That might help you build your network and gain some knowledge of opportunities out there.

Overall, my guess is that it is a plus, but I am not aware of any studies to show an effect either way.  There is a lot of content on the Internet about investing as a real estate agent.  My recommendation is to read as much as you want, consider all the input and just decide what will work for you.  You will learn and adjust as you go.

Jim.

I recommend first checking with your local planning department and whichever organization owns the streets to ensure your plan is permitted.  You don't want to be in the position of asking investors to invest in your opportunity, then get asked, "Are we allowed to do this?"  I dunno.  There goes your credibility.

Find out what you can earn with your sign if you don't already know.  That will be one of the next questions from your investors.  You don't want to discover you can make $1,000 per year after you spent $100,000 to buy the property.  You will probably have some engineering costs to develop a site plan and construction costs to build/power your sign.

Jim.

Get it listed in the MLS to increase visibility.

Keep your repairs/U&O position in reserve for once you have an offer, if you can.  A unit described as significantly upgraded shouldn't need many repairs or U&O work, but you are calling attention to it.  That may cause owner-occupant bidders to pass thinking there are issues or make lowball offers.  You can always refuse to fix anything when presented with a home inspection report.

Good luck!

Jim.

At 20 years old with no investment background, if that is the case, I recommend you consider investing in a diversified stock mutual fund.  It is relatively safe and will give you plenty of time to learn and grow while your investment grows too (hopefully!).  You can sell it at anytime to invest in something else.

Investing your $25k into not well understood real estate not only poses significant risk of loss, but also makes it not a liquid investment.  You won't be able to easily pull it out if you need it, for a car or wedding for example.  (Sometimes that is a very good feature: enforced savings!)

If you are set on a real estate investment, consider a duplex or triplex in which you live in a unit and have a nearby tenant.  This is called "house hacking".  Your tenant could pay your entire living expenses while you learn the ropes.

Good luck!

Jim.

I just saw this article on Yahoo regarding where rents are rising the fastest and thought I'd share:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cities-where-rent-ri...

I agree with the article that it isn't really a great measurement of what is really happening in an area because it is a small sampling, but might help answer some of the questions posted here along the lines of, "What city is best to invest in?"  Enjoy!

Jim.

Assuming you and/or your tenant haven't already done so, you should tell the neighbor his comments and behavior are not appreciated and considered harassment at this point.  That is just the neighbor-to-neighbor conversation.

Definitely ask your tenant to call the police the next time it occurs if you are past the neighbor-to-neighbor conversation.  Your tenant is entitled to the quiet enjoyment of the property.  Calling the police often stops the behavior and builds a paper trail if further escalation is needed.  I had a similar situation at my personal home.  Calling the police solved the problem on the first call.  Bullies respond when bigger bullies wearing nice uniforms show up on the doorstep!

Jim.

You might do best to buy the whole parcel if I am understanding this right.  It looks like your neighbor has a 30x20 parcel of unbuildable land that is only of value to its neighboring property owners.  Is that an accurate assessment?

Jim.

Watch out for "self-dealing".  You might be able to rent out a vacation home for a year and you happen to occupy it for 2 weeks.  That might be OK.  Conversely, you have a vacation home that is empty 50 weeks of the year, occupied by you for 2 and you claim a nice business loss: get a new nice orange jump suit!

Jim.

I would contact the girlfriend and ask her for their plans to pay the rent.  I imagine she is quite upset and maybe hasn't even thought about the rent if the boyfriend had been taking care of it.  That will give you a sense of at least where they say they are headed.  You could then decide to deliver the 3-day letter with a firm message (get out!), softer message (deposit in return for moving out) or accommodation (I'll give you 3 days to figure this out.).

In all options, still deliver the letter as that sets a relatively long process in motion.

Jim.