All Forum Posts by: Justin Foster

Bill Gulley
Thanks for the tips. I will look into those.

Ned Carey
Thank you again! You're always quick to help out when I ask a question.

I'm not sure how to look up absentee owners, but I'll look into that.
So far I'm thinking rental property is what I'm most interested in so I'll definitely use your advice to look out for rent adds.

I also just set up my Anchorage and Alaska keyword alerts earlier today.

I'm looking for more ways in which I can meet investors in my local area, but I am having a hard time finding opportunities here in Anchorage, Alaska.

There is no REIA in Alaska.
From what I've found, there were only about 3 or 4 RE related groups on meetup.com. Only one of them meets regularly, which consists of about 4 active members.

I am going to attend all the meetups I can with this group, but I'd also like to find more opportunities to meet with investors. What other methods would I be able to use?

Steve Babiak
I'm aware it's not USA, but to my knowledge, that shouldn't change how you determine how much rent you need to take in positive cashflow. Additionally, she refers to investing in America, giving the impression that the formula should work there too.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I annualize the $400 weekly rent and divide by 12, I get $1733. This would only be $13 more than the number I provided in my post. I don't see how this makes a significant difference in comparing the two rules.

I'm not yet in a position to decide for myself what works for me, so I'd like to use the rules that work for other first and then change later if I find something else works better.

I apologize for messing up the arithmetic of a rule I just learned today. I'll be sure not to make the same mistake again.

Ned Carey
Thank you Ned. She also called her rule a "rule of thumb," but I wanted to run it by people here before I considered using it.

I've only been learning about REI for 3 or 4 days now and I know I haven't even scratched the surface yet. How long should I learn about REI before I start getting my feet wet?

Or since I'm sure the length of time varies between people, how will I know when I'm ready to try out buying my first property?

So far I've been thinking of spending 6 months or so learning everything I can before trying out my first purchase, but I don't know how realistic this goal would be.

Scott Limoges
Wow, can't believe I made such a big mistake in the math. I just started learning about REI so I guess it shows.

The author is Dymphna Boholt. She doesn't invest in Alaska, I just found the book online through the website I linked. She invests in New South Wales and i believe parts of America.

I'm also not sure what's wrong with the link. It works fine for me.

I'm reading a free book on REI from http://iloverealestate.tv/ in which the author talks about a rule she made up called the Rule of Two. In this, you divide the purchase price by 1,000 and multiple that by 2 in order to get the minimum weekly rent you should charge.

(Purchase price / 1,000) X 2 = Weekly Rent

In the 2% rule, we multiply purchase price by .02 to get the monthly rent that we should try to get close to.

So lets say a property has a purchase price of $200,000.

Rule of two gets us $400 weekly rent. Multiplied by 4.3 for the average weeks in a month, we get $1,720 monthly rent to use as a starting point.

2% rule of the same price shows us to get close to $2,000 monthly rent.

While these two results are close to each other, there's still a significant difference between them. Which one would be more useful to go off of? Or would it be useful to use both and go for a number in between the two?

Nick K.
Thanks Nick. Just got a free copy off of his site.

Benjamin Winokur
I do plan to continue my college education after I begin investing, but I have a few years left in college. It will be some time before I can begin a career with my degree. I'm looking for things I can do in the short term.

Could you share a few of the careers with skills that transfer into REI? And do you know of any type of job I could get without a college degree that would also be beneficial to my investing endeavors?

I'm looking for an income I can get now that would help me with real estate in some way, be it a job related to real estate or just a job with skills that will help.

Brandon Turner
I'll set up those alerts. Thank you for the advice and drawing me here to this amazing website.