All Forum Posts by: Ian Kee

Welcome Irak! This is a great place to begin your journey! You mentioned you might like to invest in out of state rentals, which I can understand coming from someone in CA. That being said, do you typically like to buy things that you've never seen before, or do you like to touch and feel first? Especially in real estate, you're going to want to make sure you know a lot about whatever deal you do before you do it, and doing it close to home is usually a little easier for your first deal.

I think it's wiser to buy closer to home for your first investment. Jeremy is right, if you have a good system then there's nothing wrong with buying out of state, but I'm guessing for your first one, the system is still in the works. It's just a lot easier to do your due diligence if the property is close by, and you can react faster to anything that has to be taken care of.

Hi Ashley, 2 things.

First off, congrats on taking that leap of faith and actually taking action! That is forward progress! You didn't just sit around on your hands in fear of something like this happening. I think that's awesome of you. Fail forward. Make mistakes faster so you can get to the success. No one ever succeeded without failing. So fail as fast as you can. People who succeed don't do so because they never fail, they do it because they failed and learned from it.

Secondly, real estate investing isn't as easy as it sounds. People go to college for 4+ years to get degrees so that they can do something professionally. Real estate investing is no different. You should prepare yourself well before putting yourself in a position to lose money on something you know very little about. Now that doesn't mean analysis paralysis, and you will never know everything about real estate, but you should definitely be well prepared. BP is a great place to start and there's tons of free info here, but I also suggest investing in some real education, taught by someone you know you can trust. (not a guru, also, not me)

lol to @Russell Brazil. That's absolutely correct!

It's a good idea to start meeting people before you have something under contract. Interview a bunch of different contractors so you get the feel for what the contractors in your area generally focus on. A good contractor shouldn't charge you anything for a bid. That said, if you constantly ask for bids but never give them any work, they'll probably stop showing up to do bids for you. Yes you should have a written and signed agreement with them as to what work will be performed, and how they will be paid. If you like their work and they communicate well, of course it should be a long term relationship! The more work you give them the better deals you'll start getting.

You don't need any website to sell fix n flips. A good realtor would be your quickest and most efficient way of selling a house. It'll cost you, but the time and effort saved is usually worth it.

If you can buy a property for 65k and rent it out for 1600-1900, that's gonna be pretty decent cash flow. I'd do that all day long instead of doing fix n flips. That's just me though.

Househacking sounds like a cool idea to save money, but wouldn't you rather keep your lifestyle a little nicer and just find an equity partner to do deals with so you can truly invest in real estate without it affecting your personal life? That way you don't need your own money to do real estate deals either. Even if you have you own money, you get a better ROI when you use OPM and you aren't limited by your own cash.

I don't know of any websites where sellers will advertise this, you'll need to find them and then negotiate with them. Actually on August 25th I know of a full day workshop that can be streamed online. The instructor will be talking about seller financing and subject-to purchases. There's no charge but I can't just go posting links. Message me if you want to stream it.

By the way, I just reread my message and the first sentence may have sounded harsh...it was intended as "What is your current knowledge?"...not an accusation. Sounds like you didn't take it as such! =)

Anyways, for financing, learn about seller financing. This can allow you to acquire a property with no credit and removes the bank from the equation. Owners of multi unit buildings may be even more interested in this option as well.