All Forum Posts by: Keetaek Hong

@Wale Lawal You mentioned a few places. It seems like the North Dallas (where all the buzz seems to be) seem fairly far from downtown Dallas. How much is that a deterrent? 

I was more focusing on 20-30 minute commutable distance with a good school district (for SFHs) and downtown for MFHs. 

For SFHs.. Lake Highlands, Richardson? seemed like has metro line? How much that matter? Is this like LA metro where no one really uses metro line? 

I love the prospect of Frisco but it seems to be appreciated quite a lot. Is it still worth a squeeze?

@Bruce Lynn Thanks for sharing! Small correction.. by small apartments we would be looking at 20-30 doors. (to actually take advantage of the economy of scale) I am not sure even that is a rare gem. The thesis was that once the current spike of multi-family is absorbed, we would be in a compressed cap-rate era again in 3-5 years.

> 5+ SFH

I meant more like buying multiple houses to mimic the benefits of multi-family when it comes to vacancy risk + PM cost effectiveness. With 1 unit, it's very hard to justify a PM.

> PM

Were you suggesting that we should self-manage? We are remote investors (ironically we remotely manage STRs) and foresee challenges in managing ourselves. At least we would need someone to show the properties during turnovers. Thoughts?

> Small SFH

You suggested small SFH. Is that for ease of an exit? Like I said, we are more appreciation focused and just want break-even (assuming ~30% down) until the price climbs. Cursory research tells me places like Southland or Frisco have a good upside but we can be persuaded in all price ranges. (preferably sub 1M for a door)

Any insights would be appreciated!

Thanks @Taz Zettergren!

Yeah I am a big believer in SFH. A few challenges with SFH.. (which got us thinking MFH more)

1) rent-to-price

This seems pretty tough in DFW and HOU. Where we would put good 30-40% to have positive or break-even cash flow. Also may need to manage ourselves to account for PM cost. At that point, I am wondering if that's worthy our time. I am not sure if things are better around median price point. 

2) Vacancy risk

It seems that the best we can do is to purchase multiple (5+) SFHs to alleviate the vacancy risk. (and potentially get a better deal with PM cost should we employ one). But normally, I haven't seen a single operator try to do multiple SFHs as much as just owning a MFH. Thoughts? 

Ultimately if we go down SFH route (and not rely on STR or MTR), it seems that we would have to buy multiple properties around median price point where the appreciation is most expected?

Any recco on what cities/vicinities may fit that criteria?

Hi Dallas investors!

Looking for advice in defining our buy box. My wife and I are out-of-state investors exploring TX.

We understand the TX market has been taking a breather but we love the strong fundamentals.

Question: What areas and asset types would be best positioned for appreciation in the next 5 years?

A few things we’ve been thinking about

* Appreciation > Cash Flow: We care more about appreciation in a few years as long as cash-flow can cover occasional cap-ex.

* Low Hands-on operation: We prefer minimal hands-on engagement. (Currently managing STRs and that’s taking up a lot of our time)

* MFH vs SFH: We could consider a small apartment (20-30 units) but we are mindful of vacancy-risk of SFH and high-PM-cost of MFH.

Any guidance would be much appreciated! If there are non-residential (e.g. retail, etc) we would love to learn

@Jake Baker - That point is probably my biggest consideration. We would eventually want to hire a VA to outsource this. Any advice on how to go find one?

@Landon Mizuguchi I will surely check it out!

Quickbooks Online Pro recently bumped the price to $99/month. 

My wife and I only have <5 properties we are self managing. The old adage would say to use Spreadsheet. However, we found receipt management (downloading emails and pictures and saving them to Google Drive) to be so cumbersome and decided to join QBO train. We thought snapping receipt + sending invoice email directly to QBO was super attractive.

However, we are finding QBO to be also cumbersome and pricey

1) Personal credit card - If I mistakenly use personal CC, I have to manually create an entry (this happens quite often). 

2) Pricey - $99/month is now really adding up.

WE thought it would be a great early learning and investment to adopt QBO now as we scale (hopefully to MTR and LTR). But this is now costing me more time than good old spreadsheet other than receipt management. Any advice?