All Forum Posts by: Jeff Kehl

I just invested in an opportunity zone fund and I think they are pretty great and have good advantages over 1031 especially for me.  I am selling quite a few smaller properties with different closing schedules and gain amounts. It's nearly impossible for me to 1031 them into something I'm interested in buying. 

Instead I can just put them into opportunity zones as and when the closings happen. None of this struggling to identify properties in 30 days and then being forced into one of them if they're a bad investment.

Also, they're a great back-up if you try to 1031 and can't find a decent deal.

The final thing I would say is that I hear people say 'these are terrible areas to invest' as someone above did. When I hear that I know that person has not spent much time looking at the maps. 

The best, most expensive area in my town is in one. From what I hear there are great, already gentrifying areas in many major cities such as Phoenix, Portland, and umm Raleigh that this is true. I heard, but did not verify that the area in queens that Amazon was going to go was a QOZ.

@Scott Caldwell I have no direct advice to offer on this, but I think you're on to a good use based on what I see in my town. The local hospitals here are putting these up like crazy, 2 in the last year. They seem to like to find the major arteries into town and want to catch people driving into town before they can find other medical care so if your location is like that it's probably good. You'll need to get connected to whatever broker the hospital company is using to scout locations which in my experience is very hard.

@Mike S. I think you have a good approach to start with smaller amounts and try out a few syndicators to see which work for you. I've done a similar thing for the past couple of years. You can find syndications for less than $50k on the crowdfunding sites. So far I've had the best luck with realcrowd.com and crowdstreet.com. But there are a lot out there.

You can find most types of commercial properties on those sites. Most of the ones you will find on BP and that someone listed above will be multi-family because there isn't a big commercial real estate presence here. 

@Jeff Koehler What are you good at? Do you have any carpentry/plumbing/electric/roofing/painting skills or experience? Are you good at talking to people? I think defining that will help you know where to head.

Also, try going to some of the REI groups in the area. I think the North Georgia one meets in Cartersville.

I'm getting ready to leave the area and have sworn off flipping so I can't help you with that at the moment but still get a lot of leads sent to me so if I knew more about you, I could possibly send you some leads.

@Ricardo Rodriguez pm me the address and I will take a look at financing the rehab. If it's in a good area you could have a good deal. If it's in a bad area you may be in trouble. There are plenty of buildings in Rome that I would not take if offered to me for free because they will cost more to rehab then they are worth. If that's the case you are looking at another $10k to demolish the buildings just to get to a vacant lot that no one will buy. And you will have to do that or the city will start fining you for code violations.

Sorry to potentially be the bearer of bad news but I have fallen for this several times myself. Generally properties are cheap for a reason.

@Leona King are you buying foreclosures? I'm not sure why you would be checking title yourself otherwise.

When I was doing checks like that I was able to find free systems to check myself but it is very complicated and time-consuming. $50/property sounds like a bargain to me as that would cost me at least a few hundred dollars. My advice would be to try to narrow the properties down more before you do the title checks. 

My experience was that only a few of the properties were attractive enough to bid on anyway and then I would do a lot of research on them.

@grant grimshaw

I think it will be similar to residential, just slower. By which I mean there will be free national websites for commercial  like Zillow or Trulia where you can see everything people are offering for sale and what they're asking, Sort of like CREXI or Loopnet or the one that was sued out of existence but more complete and comprehensive.

But I don't think that will stop the 'pocket listing' process because that happens today in residential with really sought after properties.

Nor do I think it will diminish the value of a really good commercial broker.

When Zillow/Trulia/Redfin all came out people predicted all of the RE agents would lose their jobs and no one would ever pay a real estate commission again. Instead I would bet there are more resi agents than ever especially if you count wholesalers and other quasi-agents.

What it did do, in my opinion, was separate the truly great agents and brokers from everyone else. The truly great agents with an intimate knowledge of the market with tons of experience are even more valuable these days. 

And I suspect it will be similar with commercial. You may pay a small amount to a 'virtual agent' in the phillipines to walk through and look at dozens of properties for you using VR technology. But when you get ready to buy, you'll pay whatever they ask to the best, most experienced broker in the area to make the transaction successful. You won't be able to find their wisdom, knowledge, network or guidance anywhere near the internet.

@Jack Zhuang I'm not sure I get the distinction... I have 3 four-plexes next door to each other on separate tax lots. I bought them together and likely will sell them together as a 12-plex. Even when I look at much larger apartment complexes they generally come as clusters of buildings. For instance a 96 unit apartment is 12 8-unit buildings or 24 four unit buildings.

These days you will actually pay quit a bit more to buy a '96 unit apartment complex' than 12 closely located 8 units.... so my advice would be to buy them as 8 units and sell them as 96 units and arbitrage the difference...

@Account Closed Thanks for the response and I don't mean to rain on your parade as I like thoughtful, original thinking especially around affordable housing because I think that is a huge problem for our country right now. I am not kidding though about the 'tiny housing' trend in the 1930's. I was fascinated when I read about that. People will eventually want a real house so you need to plan your exit strategy accordingly, It's somewhat like the boom in apartments because of the millenial demographics. It won't last forever.

@Account Closed I have tons of more experienced sponsors pitching me deals every day, why would I invest with you? Get some experience, build a track record.