All Forum Posts by: Ke Nan Wang

One thing I've learned from my experience is that I do not set hard rules. I used those as my guidelines and I list them in the description. But I also put an caveat, "negotiable with more security deposit down." 

There are all types of people in this world, many people have different stories. I've seen people who meet everyone of my qualifications and turned out to be night mare tenants and also people who missed the mark of certain criteria and turned out to be my golden tenants. 

So I never turned people away simply because they don't meet one or two criteria. People need place to live, I and my investors need to safeguard my investment. As long as I understand the risk and mitigated the risk with sound exit strategies, I can let people live in my properties and I haven't had any losses yet. What I do gain is being able to place tenants much faster than my competitors who simply follow a mold. 

One more thing, especially for people who don't meet my criteria, besides more deposit is required, I also do a interview with them, not interrogation style, more like a friendly conversation to figure out their situation. I look for behavior tell tale signs. 

This is a more advance tenant placement tactics people who lack the experience or with an innocent mind can't read others properly should do more often before they relying on their read. 

Along with that, you also need to round off the front end with a back end. You need a skillset that you can manage tenant's expectations and enforce the lease with a professional but firm manner. Have a sound judgment when is it okay to be flexible and when you need to be firm. 

With my own properties I do that more. With investor's properties, depend on how risk averse they are, I fall under either just follow their criteria or maybe coach them my insight if I feel they are open to ideas. But I always leave the final decision to them so I'm not liable for their decisions. 

This is a personal preference thing, based on an extensive amount of people I've encountered in my life, to 99% of the people out there, pay off the mortgage is the way to go if they can. 

99% of the people in the world would be beyond content with financial freedom: meaning, in general purchase whatever you want (minus mega mansion and private jets), go wherever you want to go, send your kids to whatever school they want to go, and last a life time. That means in today's money, a monthly passive income of $50k and $10 million networth will easily sustain that lifestyle. Based on where you at now, paying off your mortgage and continue to grow steadily will easily get you there in the next 10 years with minimum stress and headache (minus WWIII happening, JK)

If you are someone who are aspire to maximize growth, have a f*k you money and want to get into politics and expand your influences, and also prepared to embrace the headache and stress that come with that lifestyle, then you wouldn't want to pay off the mortgage but put your money somewhere else that would give you maximum return. Usually in order to achieve that, you will need to get into some sort of a business. Real estate alone can't get you there. 

Pros for new construction:

Lowest insurance premium, in FL is a big deal. Not too sure about other areas in the country. 

High likelihood of low maintenance for at least the first 5 years, depend on the build quality of the house. Most builders offer a one year warranty. Reputation is important (not only in terms of good build quality, because the quality of the houses builders built is heavily depend on the quality of the superintendent they had overseeing the project and the quality of subcontractors they used). Also the reputation of customer relationship post sales, how they deal with call backs and warranties. You won't get any kind of a warranty from a old resale house. 

Easier to rent. Everyone loves new stuff, all my new constructions rents well. The house pretty much sales on its own. As long as you price it correctly, people will see the house condition matches the listing photos (professionally done), they will take the property as soon as they see it. For older houses, the mismatch between listing photos and reality is high. You will have a high percentage of people schedule showings and expect something nicer than the reality. 

Pricing, usually when builder finishes a house, especially towards the end of closing out a community, their motivation to sell is extremely high because they have to maintain the staff there until they sold the last house in the community. Builders are in the business to build, so they are very motivated to move their inventory. Therefore it's not uncommon for someone to buy a new construction that's the same price as an old house but it comes with an one year warranty and all the new stuff. 

Stuff you will get killed on if not careful with builders. We make all the money in upgrades, so if you are thinking about walking in to a model home and pick all the upgrades they offered, you will get slaughter. Either negotiate a good price or only pick upgrades that's necessary in the rough phase and do the upgrades with your own subcontractor/vendors after the house closes (kitchen upgrades, appliances, countertop upgrades, flooring upgrades, landscaping upgrades you can get them much cheaper without going through the builder).

New construction is a winner if all things are the same. 

I would do the following: Get a really good home inspection, if anything comes up, do not close until the things are fixed. If builder pushes you saying "come on, don't hold up the closing for these minor items, let's close the house and take care of the them with warranties." Don't take the bait. Negotiate a meaningful amount of funds withhold in escrow until the issues are fixed. Meaningful is something like 10x the cost of fixing them. You may not get it but set the bar high, or the alternative is you won't close. If something cost $500 to fix, withhold $5000 in escrow. Otherwise good luck getting the builder back to fix the issues. They will easily write the $500 off and save the headache. 

Depend on what you personally want to do. If you love your job, make good money from your job, have very little time, and have cash want to park into a secure real estate asset, turnkey is the way to go.

If you are opposite of that and want to dive into real estate investing operations, then fixed upper and BRRR. You can do it two ways, one is to do everything yourself and learn the in's and out's. Secondly is to outsource everything to a professional so you are basically acting as the developer/project manager. The first way you get to learn the secret behind doors, see things get ugly, get your hands dirty, it may or may not save you money but will get you the working experience you needed so you can appreciate the work and know how to talk to people. The second way you are basically get hired into a position by your own company as a mid management. Most likely you don't know much about the ground level work and must trust your professionals to give you the right advices for you to make decisions on. If you find the right people to work for you, you totally can make it work and save the cost of a project manager.

The difference between a turnkey and the second option is the cost of marketing, project management, any fixed cost plus the profit the turnkey service company would like to make. Keep in mind turnkey companies do get bulk discount from their subcontractors and vendors, some company pocket the discount for themselves, some company pass onto the discount to their customers and offer a great price. So depend on which turnkey company you work with, sometimes it's not that expensive than do it yourself, but you will get the knowledge and experience from that company.  
 

There are lots of places but I only have to make the following manual inputs and the platforms will list them for me on all platforms:

Must have:

Zillow. Zillow generates the most reliable rental leads for me. Zillow will also push your listings onto Trulia and Hotpads

MLS. I'm a licensed agent so I put my listing on the MLS. MLS push the listings to Realtor.com

Turbotenant. I use Turbotenant as my Property Management Software (PMS) to manage my properties and while I'm setting up my properties on it I can easily market the property with a click of a button and it will push out to all platforms that Zillow does not own: Apartment.com, Redfin, etc. 

Those threes are easy and handle 99% of my rental leads. 

If I want to cover all of my basis and I want to do more free marketing I would do the following for some low income rental properties:

Facebook Market Place - back in 2019 to 2021 FB market place was amazing. Getting me more rental leads than Zillow. But nowadays things have changed I barely get any real rental leads from FB market place any more. 

Craiglist - Haven't done this for years but if I have another low income property and I'm not happy with the leads I would also list it on Craiglist. 

So in summary, I first market the listing on zillow and give it my 100% effort. Then copy and paste onto MLS, Turbotenant.

Based on the listing and the market, I'll make additional listings on FB Market place and craiglist as necessary. 

If you aren't getting leads from these listings, consider lowering your rent. 

What's the average day on market for a comparable listing? Gauging rental market rate is tougher because you can only see what's active on the market, which means they are not renting. Usually only professional PM or Real estate agent has the average day on market data. Just click through the active listings and see how long they have been on the market, if they are mostly longer than yours, at least yours hasn't gone blow average yet. If you see the active ones are in general shorter than yours, then you need to figure out a way to market your listing more competitively. For you, most likely the only knob you can turn is the price knob. If you have a good sales agent, or if you get the lead on the phone, offer incentives for them to move in. First gage their interest, if they are on the fence, you can offer something like $300 off first month rent if they sign a lease by this date. If you find a good prospect and you want to place them, I would even recommend 1st month free if they sign a lease today. I'm mean the chances are you aren't gonna rent it for that 1st month anyway so it's just sounds like a very good deal to the prospect. 

Also do you allow pets? that will also open up a larger tenant pool. Always allow pets no matter what they have, just charge more if you think it's a higher risk pet (best practice is to actually specify pet fee and pet deposit in the Ad). 

Hate to break it to you but you got scammed out of that mastermind course. 

There are got to be people like me out there right? Or am I just a unicorn? I work with investors to help them setup their investment property in the city of St. Augustine, St. Augustine Beach, St. Johns County, FL and we are a turn key service from property acquisition to any exit strategy (sale, STR, MTR, LTR). We have a network of vetted wholesalers to acquire deals. And our company are state licensed real estate broker and general contractor with boots on the ground, actual data from our own operations (we operate above 95% percentile). Helping investors like you is our bread and butter. And you don't pay anything out of pocket, other than real estate agent fees, general contractor fees, and property management fees (which you are paying anyway).

Any service has the a la cart option too (simply fair market rate). Got your RE agent and want to just use us as a contractor? No problem. Got your contractor and want to use our real estate professional services? No problem. You just do businesses with our company and we will guide you through the entire process. 

Reach out to me if you want to learn more without sending an extra dime but your time. So where is the catch? I'll tell you straight upfront. My goal is to hope that by providing irrefutable real value to you, eventually that when you decide to invest in my area, you are gonna use my company's services. And with our vertical integration, I can guarantee you the best deal.

However, if it becomes clear that the relationship is just an one-sided with no long-term potential, I’ll just simply switch to prioritize other investors who are more ready and need my attention. So worst case, you gain free knowledge and experience, and I just lose some time. Neither losses are a huge financial burden. 

I’m genuinely tired of seeing people liked you getting scammed, so if you’re looking for real value and honest insights, please feel free to reach out.

Tons of references and real time operations if you need to see what we do. 

If my post comes across as salesy and violate some community guidelines, I apologize and that's not my intention. I'll delete this post if it makes certain people unhappy. Will see. 

I give 25% upside to home field advantage, meaning the property is local, I know the streets/neighbors, and I can see it touch it smell it any time of the day. 

If it's a comparable out of area rental property, the number needs to be 25% or better for me to consider. 

This is somewhat a loose metric for our current business model. 25% is just a arbitrary number with no science or data to support it. Just my gut feeling number. 

I strongly advise anyone purchasing an old house to flip to ensure they have a clear understanding of the condition of the home's drainage system. This is an area that home inspectors typically do not cover in their reports. Most time you need a plumber to scope the drainline and report the condition. Even if you want to roll the dice, at least is a calculated risk, not a surprise down the road. If the house has a septic system, especially if it's an older one, it's worth the investment to have a septic inspection done.

This concern is particularly relevant for those planning to buy and hold the property rather than simply fix and sell it. Imagine investing in all new, beautiful finishes, only to discover that the drain pipes are faulty and need to be replaced—an issue that could have been identified and addressed beforehand.

We would probably need more information from you to give any specific advise. 

What's your current employment situation? Are you in your field of expertise? Do you like your job? 

Why real estate? Is it because you makes lots of money and want to invest the money into a relatively secure asset that will appreciate, pays you dividend and provide tax benefit? Or are you at ground zero with no experience no cash and want to use real estate as a tool to build wealth? (based on the tone of your question, I'm gonna assume you are the ladder case). 

Then what kind of personality do you have? Do you like to meet new people and befriends with everyone you meet? Or are you an introvert like to lock yourself in an office and review documents all day? If you have certain skill set but lack the other, are you confident enough in yourself in terms of motivation, learning capability to learn the new skills you need to become successful in the field you want to be? 

Everyone who's successful in the real estate, or any kind of business, has a drive of doing what it takes to be successful or die trying. It's not even close to as easy as what you hear on the podcast or the courses they try to sell you. To some people, it might be easy to them because they have the natural skill set already so when they jump into real estate, they feel it's not that difficult. But to those people who lack those skills, they will think it's harder than climbing Mt. Everest. Everyone has strength and weaknesses, some has more strengths than weaknesses than others. But everyone who's successful has one common character trait, they play on their strength, they know their weaknesses, and they either improve on their weaknesses to bring the weakness up to standard or hire someone else who's great at their weakness to make it their strength. The ladder move requires capital. If you are starting out with no capital, then at least learn to bring every skill set you need up to the industry standard. Here are the skills you need in business:

1. marketing - people need to know what you do. If I give you a dollar, how effectively are you at converting that dollar into maximum exposure? 

2. sales - convert people who know what you do to something that you can make money doing what you do. Now I brought you 1000 people's attention, how many people can you convert them into paid customers? 

3. delivery - deliver the service/product you promised you'd do in the sales transaction. You made a promise to deliver the goods/service, can you actually fulfill your promise with speed, quality and least amount of pain? 

4. customer relationship - keep your old customers. Does your customer think you are amazing and willing to tell their family/friends? Does your customer think you barely meet their expectation? Does your customer think you didn't meet their expectation and will never buy from you again? Does your customer think you suck so bad that they will tell other people to not buy from you? 

5. account for what you do - accounting, legal, compliance. Did you actually make money legally from doing 1-4? If yes, is it enough to keep going?  

This is applicable in business and real estate. If you look at this list and think man I don't know any of these, I'd recommend the best course of action is to look for the most successful people in the industry in your area and try your best to go work for them. This is if you have no money. 

If you have a rich parent/rich spouse who's willing to sponsor your mistakes, a very high paying job that can sponsor your mistakes, or won the lottery and can afford mistakes, then you don't have to do the last step and keep doing what you think it's the right thing to do.