All Forum Posts by: Jerry W.

@James Wise, obviously you need an attorney from the state where this is filed.  However you I have a few thoughts on this.  First see if you can come up with a countersuit.  I am sure there should be a few places.  Next see if you can dig a bunch of folks who are suing him to file a Lis pendens on any possible damages in the suit to make it clear he will never see a dime.  then set in and get ready for depositions of him.  Be ready to have have him have to answer the questions of every person he helped dupe.  Make him answer questions about how he was involved in every deal of every person who got duped.  make him show every penny he has made in the last 3 years and the source of it.  that will really help the folks who he duped go after him.  make him show every person and every document that shows anyone would pay him money.  Bring those people in and ask every reason they cancelled his appearance.  Ask each potential forum if they would pay for him to speak knowing the ongoing investigation.  Make him disclose every single paper he signed in the last 3 years dealing with the business and allegations.  these are just some thoughts off the top of my head.  Keep in mind that truth is an absolute defense.  It really doesn't matter how bad the video makes him look as long as it contains the truth, even speculation is allowed in reason.  While deposing him have people he cheated come into the room.  Ask him to see if he identifies them.  Have written statements from them about how he helped cheat them for him to admit or deny.  Make him face 1,000 people he cheated, how they lost their life savings, etc.  Let him look into the eyes of those he destroyed financially and see the despair and hatred he caused.

In any event bud good luck.  We have bad apples in our business and I am grateful to those who point them out to save us from potentially costly mistakes.  People should be held accountable for their actions good or bad.  Make him personally appear for court hearings and depositions and be sure to have lots of folks he cheated be present to cheer him on.

@Patrick D Kelly, I am not licensed in your state and we do not have community property laws generally in my state, but if you transferred the property into an LLC you could probably do real estate without your wife's signature, however you might pay a higher rate for interest from the bank. Not sure, but is an option you could ask about here on BP.

@Kyle Phelps, first, I understand that you arguably live in the most litigious state in the nation. That being said if you form an LLc and a Holding LLC bam right there you cost yourself at least $2K a year that could have funded insurance for over $2 million in protection. You don't need a Porsche to do Uber. A ford will work. I cannot imagine how you would need such massive liability protection for primarily passive income. California will tax you about $750 to $900 for every corporation or LLC you own regardless of where it is located. Next you will pay higher interest on all of your loans since you are getting commercial, not personal loans, and you will still have to personally guarantee every loan. If you look at every major player on BP, Brandon, Brian, you name it, NONE of them use this complicated anonymous system. Not one. Yes it can protect you, but so can paying someone to drive you everywhere in a bus with you as the only passenger. Yes it is safer, but it is unreasonable. There may be situations that being on a big bus would save you from death or injury if you are rear ended from a semi truck, but really it is an unreasonable level of protection. Just get a vehicle with a seat belt and air bags and drive safely.

Buy your first few rentals in your personal name and buy really good insurance. Next if you scale up get an LLC and good insurance. Now if you want to run a bar then by all means get an LLC, a Trust and an operating LLC over top of that. This business has risk, but most of it is financial decisions, very , very few investors have probably been put out of business by law suits. Many investors have been put out of business from not making money.

Keep in mind that I charge people for creating LLCs, and I am still not recomending the Clint Coons super duper protection.

Either way bud keep pushing.  it can be hard, but you can make it, many others have succeeded just as you can.  Best of luck.

Lori, at first of course it was money and lack of knowing the market and prices.  That was overcome by saving, getting aggressive on financing and unfortunately selling houses off that had equity to leverage into more houses.  Simply putting in the time to learn prices and what rent was going for took time.  the internet speeds that up a lot now.  Getting money for the 20% to 25% down payment has been  big challenge.  I got a line of credit on a house I paid off and have been using it to buy a house, then fix it up a bit, then i get a loan from a bank and try to get as much back out as I can.  Most recently I have had another problem, getting reliable workers at a decent price or even any price.  When I first started my partner was a former contractor who went out of business due to the bust we went through.  He was amazing at getting things fixed up.  He eventually moved away and went back into contracting in a bigger town about 3 hours away.  I ended up doing all of the work then and eventually bought him out.  Since then I have struggled finding reliable help.  Nearly all contractors charge large amounts around here due to the shortage and it is not feasible to pay those kind of prices on rentals.  With rent at $600 per month you cannot pay $5 to $7K for a bathroom remodel.  I have started doing some myself, but I still have a day job.  I hire handymen a lot when I can find them.  Some work out well, but eventually raise their prices and become contractors.  My old handyman who I helped get started made more money than I did last year, this year he will do even better.  Others do well for a few months then get arrested and go to jail, others show up drunk too many times, and others do things like load a bunch of your tools up and disappear.  With a town of 3,000 now there is not a lot of choices.  I have hired some out of town contractors but those are pretty pricey often.  Right now it is especially a problem as I had a rash of good deals hit my radar and have bought most of them with another one or two pending.  I desperately need to get them rehabbed and rented, but I am also fighting 5 very recently empty rental units I need to get rented out again.  From October on it is hard to rent units until about June.  I don't want to have them empty and pay heating bills all winter.  I used to use newspaper to advertise, then internet, now I network and use internet mostly.  I recently bought some huge orange "FOR RENT" signs I am going to try out in front of the houses.  We will see.

Hey @Scott Braun, I am not in Delaware, but just saying Hi from WY.  You must have been at Warren AFB if you are Air Force.  I think Cheyenne is a great place to invest right now.

@Michael Wise, don't leave us hanging bud, tell us what you sold it for and your closing costs and holding costs.

@Robert Carlson, unless you have extremely lucrative properties I would NEVER make one LLC per property, not even using a series LLC. For the LLC to provide protection it needs to not have the income and expenses comingled with other properties. While it is not a bad idea to have an individual idea of expenses and income for each individual property I could never do it. I often buy 4 or 5 toilets and 2 or 3 water heaters at a time, and heaven forbid I need to dig up a sewer line or repair a foundation on one property. I don't want to have one LLC borrow from 2 or 3 others in order to pay a large unexpected expense, keep dozens of different checkbooks, dozens of annual business meetings or minutes, let alone how to expense tools or overhead like an office , phone, car, well you get the idea. It can be done, but if you make $100 to $200 per month per unit that is average. There are man months that you are in the red and many where you make money. For me it is easier to use one large account for many rentals and a lot easier doing books. I currently have 3 separate companies, but well over 30 units. It works well for me, but I dont want all of my time spent doing books. Now if you own multi family properties it might be different.

Hey @Loren Odegard and @Albon Shaw, welcome to Wyoming BP, hehe.  I see you are in Casper.  I have been thinking about entering the Casper market for awhile.  I like Park County and Cheyenne as well, but it may be too far to be practical to manage myself.  While Casper has its boom and bust it also has the base jobs to come back, where my little town or say Gillette may never be what it was in the past.  Keep my in mind if you see a nice house or a duplex or 4 plex that you don't want for yourself hehe.  I would have liked to have added another rental this year (I have already added 2) but the hail storm in July has me doing nothing but roofs for awhile hehe.  Give me a shout if you come through Thermopolis.

Hey Bud,

Thanks for the update.  Time to start looking for another place to fix up hehe.  @Jeff F.

I just want to add to folks that do not rely on one or two endorsements as a basis for investing money, especially folks with only a few posts.  We have had problems with folks making an account just to post good reviews.  Check them out for yourself, and look for posts from someone with a LOT of posts.  They clearly did not join just to do an endorsement.  Don't get me wrong some posters with a lot of posts can be wrong too, but the odds are better it is a real person.