All Forum Posts by: Jason Monroe

@Karen Margrave,

You didn't indicate if you wanted MLS listings or not

Let's pretend you did then most of what you are looking for is available with wordpress 

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-zillow/

Is a wordpress plugin that works with zillow 

There is also a google maps plugin for wordpress as wll 

Because you seem new to this  if you watch this video on developing user stories 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGeDZmrWwsw

There is a lot of content around developing good user stories but I tried to find a video that was less than 5 minutes.

That will help you put your requirements into language that will help developers put language around SCOPE 

The scope will be used to determine how much it's going to cost, how difficult it will be and in the end how much it will cost 

Once you have the user stories go to upwork.com  OR craigslist 

Because you seem new to this you will have to identify how to select which person will be best suited for the work. NO ONE WILL DO THIS FOR YOU 

Just like not all Handy people are good for all types of work 

IF YOU USE UPWORK 

it can help protect you because it has an escrow service built in. Thus you get to say when the DRAW will happen 

YOU HAVE TO COME UP WITH THE ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA 

Just like with Handy people the work products can vary so you have to identify where 75% done is 

THERE ARE MULTIPLE BROWSERS !!!! 

If you don't specify who your target market is and what browsers they are going to be using you might have a product turned in that only works with MAC Safari and None of your intended clients have that 

WEB Products AGE FASTER Than smokers who sun burn 

If you don't have a plan to make money from this thing the motivation to keep it going will LOOSE the APPEAL.

THERE ARE NO CODING STANDARDS !!!!!!

If you LET SOMEONE PICK a language and it's obscure 

(there is dice, monster, indeed if someone tells you a direction and you can't find other companies that need that work too you might have to search far and wide if you don't like that contractors that works for you ) 

THATS FUNCTIONALLLY Equivalent to  

INSTALLING PARQUET FLOORING THROUGHOUT A PROPERTY 

Most other contracts can't work on Parquet and will have to tear it out and do something a NEW. Same thing if someone uses a language that is some weird esoteric thing.  

I took a job in another region, lived out of motels, set fire to many of my friendships "acquaintances" at the time. To collect the money needed for my second property. Didn't eat out for 7 months.

Remember what I said about marketing? 

If you need to create awareness you gotta tell people about it. Putting up a web page is one way to do that. WordPress is a platform written in PHP to help you create web pages to get the word out so  you can annoy your friends on snap,Instagram, Facebook about how your (awful ) "premium" content is worth paying for. 

There are lots of videos on YouTube about WordPress and the uses. In the marketplace on biggerpockets there are people who advertise tools some of these "tools" leverage WordPress to create awful "premium" content or their scam / "partnership opportunity" is mentioned in the marketplace and the link they tout goes to a hosted WordPress blog. 

As long as you can mask your voice on the phone you can tell people your whatever age you want. 

As far as email as long as your vocabulary isn't sheeet you should be fine. 

People talked about WordPress Which is written in a language no one uses anymore but the blog platform is popular go figure. 

Old people are great for stories. Ask some of the old people on here what they have learned about negotiating and what hasn't worked. 

When you ask (old) people about what hasn't worked it will re-inforce a better more effective approach you read in a book. 

Old people who think they are helping love giving book lists without telling you how it changed their behavior and what behavior they had before that was causing them to perform in a sub optimal way.

OMFG, these old people with these awful non scalable income ideas. There still is lots of growth in digital currency ethereum seems to be something I have heard about from a lot of younger people. If you are young and you can't program, understand how to run marketing campaigns or sell your less than useless. There is a marketplace on here where people put jobs not sure why you haven't looked there. Most of the jobs that are put there are horrible sales gigs and 100% commission but they can provide invaluable experience and some amount of training. A lot of these roles are remote and you can get a work permit. You can work for one of these people and cozy up to these investors. A lot of these old people who provided terrible non scalable ideas are horrible at marketing their businesses. You need to learn what they are doing. What kind of results they are getting and how to help them get s better yeild these older non tech people already buy a ton of services what's to say you can't provide a service to them. I had my first business at 14 providing tech services to mostly older people. Old people will always tell you awful things like go to paint fences, cut the grass, rake leaves these were great in the 1950z, 1970z etc... You need to learn how to negotiate, sell, be part of a team, maybe do some of the rehab, comps, how to set expectations and manage them when they are not met. Many of the important things above are learned with bigger deals and when requirements are not well defined or subject to the shifting business landscape. Painting fences usually doesn't have opaque requirements.

Ah, the Midwest. 10% CoC isn't the kind of return I have hear people talk about when people talk about deals out there. When I have seen these kinds of things usually you would want to evaluate the area in Google street view and then work with a property management company In the area to know if there is upside in the rents As suggested before you have to walk all the opportunities to know if someone is trying to sell you a bag of nails. You can always compare returns for these kinds of JV in the marketplace to know if you can offer rate of return numbers that would make this work to leverage someone else's money.

Hi John,

Multi family in the  bay area is tricky. Multi family in Oakland value add can be obtained but it's capital intensive to partner with people to help them find housing else where. 

Most buildings don't quality for a 75 LTV more 65 or 70 sometimes 60 :-/

If you can partner with some other owner who has units for cheap to offer alternatives. 

Unit rehab is also a LOT because you need to change the windows out to double or triple pain in many areas as the young people that do burn outs on their moped or dirt bike can be bothersome and turn non section 8 tenants away. 

Deferred maintenance will hurt your pockets. 

If you need a 65 to 70 LTV that will also hurt your pockets. 5+ units in the bay It's is NOT for the timid or people with modest incomes unless you have access to a LOT of cheap credit.

Proforma upside are not usually easy to get as most tenants have been in place for a LONG time and can't afford the current market rate. 

@Mindy Jensen, 

The question is asked a LOT. I have 200 - 500k what should I do? Invariably some number of people always come back with Get into hard money lending. 

When you look on "site:biggerpockets.com start hard money" on google there are random pieces of information but there is no blogs, no books, no pod casts so these comments don't really provide much insight into how it's supposed to work if you're getting started. 

If there are administrative fees with the lending attorney, and then there are recovery overhead reserves in the case that someone buys a property and doesn't finish the flip where you need to foreclose on the property. What guidelines should one use?

10-20k for lawyer fees (licenses, contracts and such )  

50-100k for recovery reserves ( to fight to get your money back ) OR is this in the form of 15+% of the deal 

Either way that would reduce the initial capital available from 200k down to 130k on the high side to about 100 on the lower side. If you only had 130k would you be able to find a borrower without to much pain or wasted effort? 

The point is that for this particular subject this is a gap opportunity for biggerpockets 

@Ellis Hammond,

There are a ton of national banks one of the people I found on the site that I talked to but didn't use was 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/upenpatel

Upen was willing to go to bat, but my property was short some things that made it so it didn't work for them. I went with a bridge loan that had a "Prove You Love Me!" interest rate. 

Most national banks Wells Fargo etc... can write anywhere US Bank has portfolio loans and they can write for anywhere those loans go up to I think either 3 or 5 million.

If you had a partner with multifamily experience and BOTH YOUR GOALS are aligned. Then yes, it will change everything and open up the world to you. BOTH OF YOUR GOALS need to be aligned.

There will be a power dynamic that will change as you get up to speed, so agree up front on when you're going to evaluate the partnership maybe it's 2, 4, or 7 years 

The roles and responsibilities need to be very clear. Each building is a business onto itself that way there is no miss when it comes to expectations. 

There was a biggerpockets podcast for this multi family guy in NY that wrote a book on multi family so you might use that to come up with a roles and responsibilities matrix so you can ensure that you have all of the various facets of the business covered. 

LA and the surrounding areas have lots of rent control. DO NOT BUY IN RENT CONTROLLED AREAS unless you can sell ice to an Eskimo or you have a lot of capital set aside for those buy outs. If you don't have a bunch of alternative housing options it can be very expensive to get people to leave.

AND IF you like my posts VOTE ME UP. Every vote gives me airline miles and I like Hawaii ;-) 

Both of these folks have lots of experience doing multi family

I used: Tim @ B&R Enterprises Certified Home Inspections and Consulting www.brhomeinspections.com

for a thing deal in Fairfield 

I used New Start Home Inspections

For a deal I did in Oakland, but they are supposed to go all over 

I can't post the phone numbers PM me if you can't find them on google