All Forum Posts by: JD Martin

Quote from @Peter W.:

With regards to our labor force, I have conflicting feelings and thoughts on it. Namely it's hard to motivate folks at a wage where they are barely scraping by financially, most folks have been burned by working hard and not getting rewarded for it, so for many workers, the optimal strategy is to do just enough to not get fired but also, we have lots of lazy and entitled folks who have no clue how good they have it.  My dad always comments on how he had never seen poverty like he did when he went to Thailand for work (in the early 90s).

But back to your original point, given the auto industry is cyclic, I suspect, like you, that the companies will build new factories where they get tax breaks and have favorable labor laws and costs within the US which may or may not be Detroit.

That's a point most people don't understand. I was in the Navy and some of the poverty I saw in places was shocking, even for a guy like me who grew up in shocking US poverty. The "poor" in the US live better than 90% of the rest of the planet, maybe even more than that. Your point is well taken about breeding indifference into the population - I see that everywhere where I live - but that is also what happens when there's no class struggle to make something of yourself, especially when the safety net is more of a cradle-to-grave bassinette. We allow too many people in this country to receive benefits without effort, and that robs them of their self-esteem and breeds continual laziness. One of the reason immigrants here bust *** compared to natives is because a lot of the safety net is unavailable to non-citizens, as it should be. 

For a lot of these people, you are never going to get it through their heads that the days of quitting a factory job in the morning and having a new one by the afternoon are gone and never coming back - even if the factories come back they will be operated by a tenth or less of the people in the past. I was watching a This Old House episode where the guy was touring an OSB plant, and there was literally about 7 guys running this factory that had about 20 operations going on and was the size of a couple of airplane hangars. That's what manufacturing is these days, and if we brought all of those factories back tomorrow all of the whiners and criers would still be unemployed because there would be hardly any jobs to give them, and the jobs that were there require some modicum of skill - something a lot of these blue collar people are just unwilling to do (go better themselves with marketable skills). 

I'd be shocked if it made any difference. Any car maker coming back to the US to start production is going to be somewhere in the South where unions are weak and right to work laws are everywhere. The old factories are dinosaurs and factory legacy is one of our huge disadvantages compared to China et al. I agree we need to make things here, but we don't need to make everything here and would be better served applying limited labor to future tech than making wagon wheels. It may sound harsh to say it but non-tech American workers are pathetic compared to the rest of the developing world. In my area Mexicans and other Central Americans that do "labor" work - construction, landscaping, basic factory work, etc - run circles around the natives. Americans have had it too good for too long and at the bottom rungs are not hungry, they're bitter, resentful and expect others to take care of them. We need good jobs here for sure for people who are not college educated, and we shouldn't be sending everyone to college anyway as it's a waste of time and money, but we also need a total reset of the working labor force ethos. Before I retired, you couldn't give away entry level water system jobs despite the great benefits; these guys wouldn't do the jobs for $20/hr even with no experience required. I hired a lot of people in my career and my favorite part about retiring was not having to find one decent warm body to fill important jobs among a thousand deadbeats. Maybe if we started letting people starve in the street again the hunger ethos would return. 

Quote from @Zach Logan:

@Randall Alan yes I understand what your saying but as I somewhat inferred, was the 100k property to put it straight forward is in the hood with lower classes tenants no appreciation when the 400k property would be better appreciated and better quality 

 You are right to consider the long term prospects of the property, and yes you are going to work harder on a D vs B class property, but the more expensive property still has to perform to be worthwhile. That kind of cash flow on a property that expensive is a time bomb ticking, unless you have plenty of reserves and a good paying job. Apples to apples, it *might* make sense with strong appreciation, but that's a big gamble. My rule of thumb is that every property needs to be able to pay its own way, wherever it's located, regardless of appreciation, to be considered for purchase. 

Quote from @Joshua Piche:

I am currently saving money to help put my self in a better position and be able to qualify for a better property or just have a better down payment ( for context I am looking to house hack my first property) . After speaking with some people I got told a lot that getting a soft pre approval was a good idea. What made me hesitant was the same people that told me this offered to do it themselves selves. Which made me think if it’s actually a good step to take. Some people say a soft credit pull won’t affect my score some told me it will . Just looking for some clarity here to see if a soft pre approval should be on my to do list even though I don’t plan on buying within the next 6 months . 

Well, if you are using financing you should have some idea how much loan you can get approved for because it's not going to be limitless especially just starting out with no track record. You can kind of think of it as you would if you wanted to look for a house of your own; the bank would give you a pre-approval of $X amount, which you would then know is your likely ceiling. 

Quote from @Kam Nak:

Hello, I have a 6 bed room house in Seattle and I am looking for a property manager who can do rent by the room.

Looking to work with the manager immediately - Thanks

 This is going to be tough for you to find, I predict, because rent by the room is by its very nature transitory, and PM works best with stable, long term tenants. If you manage to find someone they are probably going to want a lot more money than you are willing to pay because this type of rental is going to be a lot of work.

Quote from @Eric Gerakos:

Perhaps rent out the caskets as tiny homes.

 🤣🤣🤣

Quote from @Henry T.:

The pics don't explain what's going on. You need pictures showing the full yard and its contact with the house. What the heck is going on outside? You need to fix that before you fix the foundation. What is all the spray foam? Is that someone's idea of how to fix water intrusion?

Simple rule...land and water must slope away from the house, not into it.

 Exactly. You can tell from the cracks there is some serious load being placed on the wall from the other side, which is almost guaranteed heavy clay without drainage. I don't know who did the spray foam but that should have been hint number one of what's going on. Without seeing any other pics $22k sounds like it might be a bargain - that's going to need a full excavation to the footers on at least two sides to put in a proper toe drain, probably a pony wall on the inside, plus existing concrete repair and anchoring and sill work. That is not going to be cheap. 

Quote from @Becca F.:

Quote from @JD Martin:

Quote from @Becca F.:

This post needs to be pinned so that it's at the top of the Starting Out forum for every new investor from California to see this. Excellent comments which will save lots of people time, stress and money

@Moderators can you pin this post please? 

 Thanks for the suggestion, but it's easy enough to find for those interested 🙂

Just wondering what determines if a post gets pinned. I saw the LLC one that was pinned - that probably must be asked thousands of times lol

 Well, it's not so much a science as an art. Posts that deserve further discussion, things promoted by staff, etc. Once in a while it's just an accident. 

Quote from @Becca F.:

This post needs to be pinned so that it's at the top of the Starting Out forum for every new investor from California to see this. Excellent comments which will save lots of people time, stress and money

@Moderators can you pin this post please? 

 Thanks for the suggestion, but it's easy enough to find for those interested 🙂

Quote from @Lynnette Pombo:

Thanks for all of the feedback. How is it that I could be personally sued if each of my properties are in separate LLCs? Isn't the point of an LLC to provide personal protection?

Don't fool yourself that the veil of an LLC cannot be pierced. It's not nothing but it's not foolproof.