All Forum Posts by: John Fortes

 Learn, apply, and grow! 

We all have to start somewhere. Here are some tips. 

1. Educate yourself! This is going to be what you do for the rest of your life as you constantly tweak and insert what you learned into action.

2. Analyze as many deals as possible. Keep reviewing and learning how to spot a good deal from a bad deal.

3. Connect with like minded people.

4. Talk about real estate! Be vocal and intentional with your conversations. You never know who is interested and needs help. Since you have educated yourself and analyzed deals, great chance to partner with a money partner on that front.

5. Raise money for your own deals.

6. Find deals for others. Also known as bird dogging.

7. Invest in someone else's deal or syndication. Learn from the process and get involved someway, somehow. This allows you to earn while you learn by investing passively in their deal.

8. Find a mentor and volunteer to help them for free. Add value to someone else for free education and building a friendship/relationship.

9. Write a blog, start a podcast, start a YouTube channel, or do all 3.

10. Be active on your social media platforms and create your own brand.

These are not step by step processes. Just guidelines to help you get to your end goal. 1, 2, and 3 are crucial but everything else tackle it in your own way and process. Just do it. Hope this helps, good luck, and God bless!

Selecting a market is all your preference. Ask yourself, where do you want to invest, how is the market analysis, job growth, and population... There are many other factors as well. 

Benefits of turnkey are the obvious, ready to go and no maintenance. Are you managing or hiring a property management company to manage the investment. This then, makes you manage the manager. 

Cons is no value add play and appreciation is on the paydown of each payment. Then you have trapped equity but you can't improve the investment so you are playing with house money when you close. Just make sure your not looking to try to refinance that down-payment funds back out for quite some time. 

Steps to take

1. Educate yourself! This is going to be what you do for the rest of your life as you constantly tweak and insert what you learned into action.

2. Analyze as many deals as possible. Keep reviewing and learning how to spot a good deal from a bad deal.

3. Connect with like minded people.

4. Talk about real estate! Be vocal and intentional with your conversations. You never know who is interested and needs help. Since you have educated yourself and analyzed deals, great chance to partner with a money partner on that front.

5. Raise money for your own deals.

6. Find deals for others. Also known as bird dogging.

7. Invest in someone else's deal or syndication. Learn from the process and get involved someway, somehow. This allows you to earn while you learn by investing passively in their deal.

8. Find a mentor and volunteer to help them for free. Add value to someone else for free education and building a friendship/relationship.

9. Write a blog, start a podcast, start a YouTube channel, or do all 3.

10. Be active on your social media platforms and create your own brand.

These are not step by step processes. Just guidelines to help you get to your end goal. 1, 2, and 3 are crucial but everything else tackle it in your own way and process. Just do it. Hope this helps, good luck, and God bless!

 I would ask how he got to that assessment. Ask him to show you visually and see if you can make sense of it. Ground up is a different animal as returns are definitely delayed because there is no income coming in during construction and if you are an investor in this deal what would it take for you to jump in knowing the returns will come later. GP seems to eat during the hold period and then everyone cash's out at the end. Investors want to see the velocity of their return. How fast is my money coming back to me?

Outside of that, consider your reputation on this. If you decide to walk and don't bring in your investors, you hold your investors interest over your own.

If you're trying to understand the structure then its based off the sponsor providing the deal. Everyone is different in how they run it. 

If you're looking at the structure to determine if your going to invest then you are probably looking for reasons not to invest in the deal. If the opportunity is going to make you the returns and hit your goals and you trust the sponsor then focus on your target numbers in your seeking returns. 

Congrats on your profession and moving forward in your space. 

If you could find investments with others that produce more in returns that can help cover your student loan payments and pay it down more then do it. Invest in a opportunity where it could pay you to pay your loans. 

Sounds like a JV opportunity as you pointed out its 1 investor. See what numbers would make for a good return for them and provide them that with an equity split as you are managing... Don't know what the numbers reflect but if they are bringing the capital and you are doing the work, 50/50 is a starting point. Till you build up more of an investor pool, I wouldn't consider syndication at this time.

Hope all is well. I understand your frustration during these times. Are you self managing this property and have a property manager for the out of state? Why not look for a local PM to handle the current one that's been the issue?

In the event that you do sell, consider investing in syndications or buy again next to your current out of state. Plenty of ways to get your investment through real estate either hands on or hands off. Stay the course if you can.