All Forum Posts by: James R. Copeland

Hello there!

   My wife, Desiree, is a Real Estate Broker for the Vancouver, Camas, and Washougal areas and is looking for new clients/investors to represent. Whether buying or selling, Des is a 3rd generation realtor and is an ideal partner to help you achieve all of your real estate goals! She can be reached by:

Email: [email protected]

Text/Phone: 503-875-3523 

Very respectfully,

Jim Copeland

Hello there!

   My wife, Desiree, is a Real Estate Broker for the Vancouver, Camas, and Washougal areas and is looking for new clients/investors to represent. Whether buying or selling, Des is a 3rd generation realtor and is an ideal partner to help you achieve all of your real estate goals! She can be reached by:

Email: [email protected]

Text/Phone: 503-875-3523 

Very respectfully,

Jim Copeland

Buying/selling on emotion is for suckers. With the stock market I have a pretty good idea of what indicators to look at before buying or selling a stock. What's the P/E ratio, how's the earnings per share growth looking, dividend percentage, what's the federal reserve doing? Are big money investors on wall street flooding in or out of a particular sector? All these questions you'll see answered non-stop on CNBC all day every day. But I'm having a harder time figuring out what some good macro indicators are for real estate investors. 

Obviously knowing the mortgage rates comes to mind. It's VERY important (at least it has been for me) to know roughly what interest rate to expect to have for a new mortgage if I were to buy another house right now. It's also nice to have a general sense of which direction those rates are moving. I'm still a bit hazy understanding exactly how an RE investor should shift strategies around those rates, but that's one of the questions I hope to have answered or at least discussed on this thread.

Second goal of this thread though is to ask what are some broader macro and more focused local micro indicators that you, as an investor, use as buying or selling signals? For example, when the stock market has a major decline, do you immediately go buy more homes? Sell more homes? Why? 

Also what are some local microeconomic indicators you use to study areas you're considering buying? Do you look for areas where businesses are moving in? New colleges? New highways/onramps? Transportation hubs? What makes you rush in and what makes you run out?

Hope that wasn't too many questions for one topic, but if one question jumps out at you more than the others feel free to just address one. Would love to get some of y'alls thoughts on this subject as I've been scratching my head about it a lot lately!

@Michael S. OMG THANK YOU!!!

So I've got two units up here in Vancouver, WA. I've lived in both at one point over the last several years but now have a pretty nice equity cushion built up in both. (150k in one, 200k in my primary which is house-hacked). I've applied for a HELOC and it looks like it's gaining traction. Now though I'm torn between two seemingly great strategies. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Strategy #1

My wife is a new realtor up here in Vancouver so one strategy is to use the the HELOC as a down payment on a multi-plex in our nearby market with her as the buying agent. We also have a pretty good property manager here in this area that is very helpful that I'd like to add more units to at some point since their commission drops with added units. Cons? It's gotten expensive up here, a multiplex of good quality will probably start around $600k in Vancouver, less if we go out a bit further, but our property manager only services Clark County. Still, might be a good way to go.

Strategy #2

This one's gutsier, but might lead to greater cashflow, which I'll need when I retire in 6 years. Strategy 2 is to use the HELOC to buy cashflow properties out of state. I'm hesitant to buy fixer uppers out of state so I'd likely look at turnkey properties and property managers in growing markets where "1% Rule" cashflow properties are more prevalent. If this strategy is the clear winner, then the follow-up question is which market to start studying?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and if further details are needed just let me know. Just thinking big picture at the moment though.

-Jim

I dunno if I'm just missing an obvious button or something, but sometimes I see people reply and write @username comments and sometimes it'd be really handy to know how to do that. I tried just writing @username but it didn't seem to work. Am I missing something? 

Shoot, would if I could but it's in the middle of my workday. 

Love this topic. I'm also in Residential in Vancouver, love the idea of moving towards commercial but the steep prices and learning curve are all roadblocks at the moment. Thanks for posting!

Thanks Bjorn! Here in Vancouver 2 Mil can probably get you between 10-18 doors I would guess. The market has appreciated considerably in recent years. I could go a little further out to Longview, Kelso, etc for some lower prices, but I'm not as confident in the demand and quality of tenants having spent so little time there. 

When you got started with your 12 unit did you find the loan application much different? How much of a down payment did you need? 

So I've got a couple SFR's so far and would like to eventually, someday, own an apartment building or two. In my area a SFR of good quality can be found around $300k, while an apartment building is going to run well over 2 Million... From what reading and asking around I've done I've learned that commercial loans for first timers typically want something like 30% down payment just to come to the table, and then there's the higher interest rates, and balloon payment to add to the worries. So it sounds like the financing portion is completely different, what else makes it a challenge to get into? What's it take to make the leap successfully?