All Forum Posts by: J. Martin

@Account Closed , if you get the OK, it would be great to meet you. It looks like you'd be the most prolific BP member at the meeting if you were able to attend.. I agree traffic will not be great, so I tried to make it close to public transit.. Should be a great group.

Time to jump on the BART bandwagon! You can relax, read, not pay attention to the honking idiot behind you.. No traffic.. You can drive to the nearest BART station (Fremont?) and trains usually leave every 10/15 minutes. You can get public transit directions door to door for anywhere, anytime in the Bay at www.511.org . Up until last month, I hadn't never tried blood sausage nor did I know what it was (aka black pudding), until I saw it served all over Spain. But I found that I quite liked a lot of them.. Never know what you might enjoy until you get stuck with it!

Then we'll meet at The Trappist bar on Tues, 12/10/13 near 12th St BART in Oakland at 6:30PM!

@Dee Cross , sorry you can't make it this time.. Next time, we can shoot for Wednesday instead.

@Michaela Graham , definitely interested in hearing more about GA and how everything pencils out.. I think you might make a killing on the way up! Way to get in low! How I long for the day when I can (semi) retire on my passive income.. ;) btw, I saw someone from the east coast on a bay area forum who was trying to buy property - specifically in Hercules - to my surprise. Don't know if you're interested in working on a deal out here, but search Hercules and you'll find him.. (On an East Bay Meetup post I think..)

ps. I saw your post about getting up early, and I'm suspicious of any friend that would try to wake me up so early in the morning! lol

@Troy Fisher Had the pleasure of chatting the other night at the SF meetup, and hope you can make it out to this one too.. (but I know it's a ways!!)

@Jaren Barnes , it was also a pleasure, and let me know if you want to turn your marketing machine on my area of Richmond! If you can bring me an off-market 2-4 unit property in the areas I roam with a GRM below 8 (or closer to 7!.. more for you!..), I'm willing to put some money in your pocket.. I don't have time to prospect for off-market properties and just buying on-market for the last 2.

@Arron Sweeney , got to chat with you a bit in messaging, but looking forward to hearing more about your plans..

@Chris Music , haven't had the pleasure yet.. but soon will!

@Denise Alberto , thanks for the recommendation on the contractor (maybe test on my next project), and interested to hearing more about what you're up to.

@Sam Magi , will be nice to meet face-to-face after some messaging..

Looking forward to meeting/seeing all of you! Any and all are welcome, so anyone else, come out and say hi!

@Account Closed ..

We're having an EAST BAY MEETUP! Tues, Dec 10 @ 6:30PM at the Trappist Bar near 12th St Oakland BART. I'm hoping @Andy Kaufman is coming too!! I know some of you are on the peninsula. I was hoping by getting it a little further south and right by public transit, it might make it easier. So if you can drive to a nearby BART station or want to take Caltrain then BART over, please come join us!

Minh, I saw you had some questions about the format for the last meetup. I plan on keeping it open to whatever people want to discuss. A few of us have already met each other at an SF meetup, so I'm happy to keep it open to talk about areas we're investing, strategies, deals or partnerships, or whatever folks are most interested in.. There will be no "speaker." Please come out and join us if you can!

Post on the forum in the link if you all can make it out! It looks like about 7 people want to come so far after a day on the forum..

http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/86/topics/106912-east-bay-meetup---dec-10-in-oakland

Hi @Joe C. , @Bob Pohl , and @Kyle Zaylor ,

We're having an EAST BAY MEETUP! Tues, Dec 10 @ 6:30PM at the Trappist Bar near 12th St Oakland BART. I'm hoping @Andy Kaufman is coming too!! Post on the forum in the link if you all can make it out!

http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/86/topics/106912-east-bay-meetup---dec-10-in-oakland

EAST BAY BP MEETUP!!!

Tues Dec 10th @ 6:30PM at The Trappist bar, near 12th St Bart in Oakland.

http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/86/topics/106912-east-bay-meetup---dec-10-in-oakland

And yes, the wonderful San Francisco folks I'm referring to are all of you :)

Just going to tag some names in case anyone wants to come. It's only an 11min BART ride from Embarcadero!! Come on out and have a beer and chat with your BP brethren! (used for alliterative purposes only gals!) If you're coming, please post on the forum for the East Bay meetup in the link, rather than here, so everyone can know who's coming. Looks like about 7 people so far.. We'll mingle around some more too this time, and I'm feeling like a superdork, I'll bring some name tags!

Thanks again to @Sarah Lam for arranging the SF meeting and bringing us all in touch! ;) Thanks Sarah!

@Jessica Yau a Yau

@Ralph E. E.

@Andrew N. Nguyen

@Kris Lai

@Sarah Lam

@Amit M. , your expenses have been phenomenally low! I'd definitely expect more in the future! That's great though. San Francisco for sure will skew to the low side of the expense/revenue ratio and the expense/sqft should be low for a while if the units are renovated, good tenants, good exterior of building, roof, wiring & plumbing not 60 yrs old, etc. (happens a lot in SF!)

Regarding that Alameda property, I can't speak knowledgeably about the property, because I don't know what rents I could get out there.. Approaching a 14 GRM by the selller's estimates though, so I would want quite a bit of upside. Plus Alameda is a liquification zone for earthquakes I believe, and they have a "rent mediation board" for substantially increased rents (although not explicit rent control and not sure how often invoked.)

I'm a big fan of Oakland, but prices are getting hot. And I don't like rent control. I'm more familiar with the West Oakland, Lake Merritt/Downtown, and North Oakland areas. Don't know much about south/east of there or the hills..

Glad you can make it in East Bay. I'm going to post it on this forum also right now..

Hi @Scott C.

This is a tough question, and will start with what I hear every day at work: it depends!!! Ned is spot on with what they do on HOA's (search for HOA reserve estimates on google) - but is missing one point- you also have to estimate what point in the life cycle the items currently are. The older and crappier the building/roof/interiors/appliances, the more you need. In other words, if you have a beat-up roof on one of your properties, electrical wiring from the 1940's on another, and you can see soft spots of wood rot around windows and downspouts of the other, I would want to have a lot. Roof= $7-10k in 3-5 years, electrical=$20-25K in 3-5 years. Wood rot = $5-10K in 1-2 years. I might want to have $20-25K or so today and saving at a brisk pace. If I did substantial rehab at purchase, fixed everything, 7-yr old roof, newer appliances/AC, built in 1980's, no wood rot. Maybe $5-10k and saving at a decent pace.. A little cushion over any immediate surprises if they come due more quickly than you expected..

I don't do a full-blown "precise" calculation of the years for everything on my properties (4plex & 2 SFR's). Here's a few major points of consideration that will point you in whether it should be on the thin side or fatter. Start with the big stuff. These will be the biggest "lumps" that you should plan for..

How much deferred maintenance is on the building? (Wood rot, termites) How old is the building? (need new electric? plumbing?) How does the roof look? AC units, appliances, heating system works well and not about to bunk out? Are you planning on doing upgrades/remodel when a tenant moves out? How much excess cash flow do you have coming in on a monthly basis? How much access to financing sources (family borrowing, credit cards, HELOC etc.) do you have? What is your cash flow like?

The more access you have, the less I would sweat having every last dime for every contingency. Same with CF. If you have $4K in free cash flow coming in every month, I wouldn't be as worried about having every dime, because you can make it up quickly. If you're scraping by, I would want to have everything I need for repairs, plus a big cushion. I think a HELOC may be a good product for you if you have a decent amount of equity and qualify. MOST of the time, it's there like cash. But you don't have to let it sit idle and you only pay while it's outstanding. Maybe can "replace" some of your liquid cash if you have lots of equity and already set up, w/ a checkbook. And the more units you have, the more likely you may be able to be to get a more predictable rolling average of expenses. The expenses might be a bit "lumpier" when you just have a few..

Good luck!!

It’s time to schedule (another) meet up in the East Bay! I recently had the pleasure of meeting quite a few fellow BP investors in San Francisco, and had a great time enjoying some drinks and learning from everyone’s different approach/strategy/mindset. I believe Andy Kaufman arranged the last East Bay meetup (I was not there), but I’d like to join in and start another. (I’m going to post this on the old thread too) Hopefully we could make it a regular thing. Please post if you are interested!

I’m proposing to meet in Oakland at the Trappist (bar), about 4 blocks from the 12th St Oakland BART station in early December – Tuesday, December 10? I’m proposing this location due to its central proximity in travel time from many areas within the Bay, and the number/frequency of BART trains. The bar is a pretty good size (‘good for groups’ on Yelp) and has a great beer selection! (and other drinks and food). Not too close to either of the holidays..

BART travel times to 12th St Oakland :

San Francisco, Embarcadero - 11min

Berkeley – 11min

Walnut Creek – 23min

Daly City – 29min

Fremont – 36min

Below are some local folks I thought might be interested. Please post on here if you would like to come, and if you can come on Tues, December 10 from 6:30-9PM (or as late as you want to stay). If you would like to come, but cannot make that date, state if you can do it on the 11th or 12th instead (or some other date if necessary). If you know someone else who might be interested, please tag them also so they can get a notification.

@Andy Kaufman , @Sarah Lam , @Michaela G. , @Johnson H. , @Adam Hofmann , @Arron Sweeney , @Peter K. , @Sam Magi , @Joe C , @Amit , @Jay Dao , @Bri R. @Denise Madrid , @Jaren Barnes , @Jessica Yau , @Ralph E. , @Bill Bockwoldt , @Minh L. , @Jimmy Tu , @Tosin Olatunbosun

Obviously, many of my tags did not work. I tried! I swear! Hope to see lots of folks out there!

I’m also going to add some ‘keywords’ to the bottom of this post for those locals who have keyword alerts for their area:

Keywords: East Bay , Bay Area , Meetup , Meet up , Meet-up , San Francisco , Oakland , Berkeley , Alameda County , Contra Costa County , Solano County , Richmond , Hercules Concord Albany Pittsburgh Marin San Rafael South Bay Peninsula

@Joel Owens @Jon Klaus @Ed Wood

Have you guys heard of the 5 or 10% down conventional on 2-4 unit properties, owner-occupied? Or is just for SFH?

@Steven J. 1 at a time, as others said, except under very specific circumstances, as outlined in my post above, with the link to HUD.

Ya, thanks again @Sarah Lam for getting everyone organized to come out! I'm always interested in the out of state numbers, but just can't quite get over not knowing someone that is there on the ground.. But a lot of people have been killing it all over the country from out of state! So whatever works! You're so knowledgeable about the market.. the water's warm.. can't wait to hear about your first jump in!

@Andrew N. , it was a pleasure, and I am interested in seeing how it plays out over time. @Troy Fisher , I think you have a great idea about poking around to see what people are using for maintenance per foot. In my mind, this is much more closely associated with maintenance expense, along with construction type/materials, age, deferred maintenance at purchase, and last but not least, THE TENANTS! Of course, utility metering, local factors such as tax rates, vacancy rates will all play a part in the total expenses beyond maintenance. I do sort of indirectly use a simplified ratio analysis when prospecting - mostly on the GRM.

Regarding expenses on my properties, luckily (IMHO) for me, I bought almost everything I have when it was vacant, so I went to town on everything with my handyman so I wouldn't have to deal with it later.. And they're about 30 years old, compared to 100+ in SF, Oakland etc. So having modern electric/plumbing helps a lot. (although it's not a new building of course..) Plus no air-conditioning units or boilers/HVAC to maintain. Mild weather. No freeze. Roofs in good condition except for on one of the SFR's. This has kept my expenses/repairs very low in the beginning - although they will go up on average over time - but they throw off enough cash flow to build big reserve cushions.. and some for me :)

$7K in gross rents and <$4K/mo in PITI @ ~ 10% average downpayment (In the Bay mind you!) So taxes and insurance are taken care of there.. The coin-op laundry pays most of the common utilities on 4plex. SFRs pay their own except garbage. One SFR has handyman tenant (not my handyman), and agreed in lease he takes care of all regular/minor repairs. I PM all my properties, with some help from handyman. Saves a lot. Having said all that, if I just wanted to get my principal paydown as returns, I would have to spend $3K/mo on minor items/expenses and long-term reserves to get to 0 cash flow. Only 3 structures, ~5K sq ft, in good condition. I don't quite see $36K in expenses/yr after PITI.. But we'll see what it plays out to over the next decade.. In low-priced areas, you might have to have 10-15 SFR's and 10-15K+ sq ft to maintain, with more weather-related repairs/heating/cooling.. So I'm sure the expense ratio is a little different.. How much? No clue..

@Jessica Yau , we should all do musical chairs next time so everyone can mingle a little more! I'd love to talk to you about your Oakland property sometime. I was putting in a lot of offers in Oakland before I came up to Richmond, but was having difficulty when I was going for fourplexes with an FHA and not enough excess downpayment at the time to make up any gap in the appraisal.. It was rough.. But this was in 2012 when the market was hothothot there. Oh wait, it still is!!! And not a big fan of rent control, as a longer-term buy/rehab/rent investor!

@Bill Bockwoldt , same deal! I didn't get to talk to you much.. but hopefully at our next meetup in SF, or out in the East Bay!

@Ralph E. , it sounds like you have the experience behind you! Good luck on the next phase!

@Andy Kaufman , it was nice talking to you too, and we're going to get a regular East Bay Meetup going!!

If I missed anyone, I'm sorry! And looking forward to seeing you all and others at an upcoming East Bay meetup too!