All Forum Posts by: Kevin McGuire

The Real Estate Guys

Refresh Your Wealth

How to Lose Money

@Christina Itabashi that’s how I work, with a trusted team. I’m a remote investor and all 8 properties I’ve bought I didn’t see in person. I made offers based on photos and on-site visit by my trusted agent and property manager. Purchases followed inspector review and my offers always provide me an escape clause based on inspection.

Move fast, have a trusted team, manage the risk.

I moved from excel to QuickBooksOnline for 7 units. It was the absolutely right move for me. It reduces confusion and errors, I’m ready for tax time, and I can now scale.

@Ismael Reyes that’s awesome congratulations! Tampa’s a lovely place too.

Hello fellow BP'ers,

I have a friend who is starting his retirement but is anxious about no longer "getting a paycheck". The issue is psychological, not financial. He's been financially fortunate working in high tech, is frugal, and logically knows he'll be fine financially. However, as I understand, it's normal for one who has worked hard and saved, seeing that savings number go up all the time, to freak out at the idea of seeing it go down, forever. For my part, that's why I got into real estate investing, for the financial and psychological comfort of passive income generation without depleting your capital, but he doesn't have the inclination to be a landlord. He would qualify as an accredited investor.

I'm encouraging him to look at passive income generation outside of stocks and bonds. I mentioned to him two alternatives:
A) Hard money lending

B)  Investing in a real estate syndication

Questions to you helpful folks:

1) Do you have other avenues you'd suggest?

2) Regarding syndication, are there posts, sites, or books you could point me to that I could pass on to him? I only have passing knowledge and have wanted to learn more anyway.

Thanks in advance,
Kevin

PS. Honestly, it really is a friend of mine, it's not me asking like, "I have a friend who has this embarrassing rash..."

@Axel Meierhoefer Similar to other here I use Quickbooks Online. I was using a single bank account for transactions but spreadsheets and with seven properties was finding it error prone and confusing. I’ll not look back now from using QBO. In addition to keeping expenses and revenue organized you can run various helpful reports and it’s easy to share with your account. Highly recommend although it’s a bit of learning to set up. I could easily manage triple the properties with this system.

@Jason Gamio Yes, well until recently.

I have a trusted real estate agent and property manager team in a different country to where I live. I have seven SFH's there, most of which I had never seen until recently except for the listings. In fact I had previously visited the city and not gone by to see them since I was busy with other things. I can do this because I trust my team. I wanted to go by and see them more out of curiosity and to help my ability to visualize issues my property manager is informing me of. I'm currently under contract for a fourplex I've not seen.

On the plus side, it allows you to buy with your left brain. You buy based on the numbers and the advice of your team. By contrast I’ve started looking at places where I live and on a few occasions I’ve slipped into right brain mode, wanting to buy a place because I liked the place. I’m concluding that I’m better off NOT seeing them!

@Ron Hall I’m really curious to find out what you learned. I had same reaction as @David Robertson — I couldn’t tell anything from the site. Thanks!

@Loren Clive you wouldn't be the first to accuse me of overthinking something! I do actually keep a professional distance from my tenants: I have a property manager in the middle, most of them I didn't meet until recently, one I still haven't met. They are not my friends and I agree one needs to have a clear professional relationship with the tenants. But, we can still be friendly. My comments about win-win were around my personal approach to life, the set of principles which I try to apply to everything I do. "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey is a great book on that. That includes win-win. I believe that good deals are mutually beneficial. You have a place to sell, I want to buy a place; we have differing views on price, if we can come together on it then great we both win. Similar as a landlord: you need a place to live, I have a place that I'm looking to get rent from. Being a landlord though I can affect their lives in even more positive or negative ways. For example, I replaced a furnace that was old and acting up in the fall because it suxs to not have heat in the winter in Ottawa (where that property is). I could've waited until it broke. Then again, it would've likely been an emergency call which would've cost me more. Win-win! My personal belief is that every life I interact with I can leave a little better or a little worse through my interaction; I choose. Some of those interactions happen to be financial. You may choose different.

@Thomas S. I disagree that viewing them as a customer isn't important. The problem with being a tenant is that their choice is "sticky" because it's a pain to move. If tenants were to suddenly become highly mobile and you found yourself being afraid, then you've discovered that you were over-reliant on those barriers to mobility. It's like the cabby industry: for the longest time they were able to keep their markets locked and could deliver poor value as a result. The companies and drivers got lazy and thought of the person in the back as a "fair". Then along came Uber. In the end, customers win because they vote with their money, and industries filled with dissatisfied customers are ripe for disruption.

@Joshua Dorkin thanks for the additional guidance.

@Thomas S. my property manager is new to the role and I am training him. My comment about good tenants being custodians is not that I am reliant on them, but that better things happen. The value of my property is my biggest asset and risk exposure, the rent is kind of inconsequential by comparison. Perhaps if I had 100 units instead of 7 I'd take an approach similar to yours.

@Account Closed So far I've had great tenants and I view myself as lucky. But I also know that part of it comes down to my property manager being an excellent judge of character.  That said, I remember when I was a kid, my dad had some low-end rental properties, definitely the first row of the Monopoly board! I remember tenants trashing the place, stealing cupboards and even once a toilet. Who steals a toilet?!  That completely turned me off being in the rental game for the longest time. I hope I can, through better tenant selection and management, reduce the chance of such nightmares.