All Forum Posts by: Larry Turowski

I live and invest in Rochester NY, meaning all of Monroe county.  We have one main group here and other smaller groups. Network is a great way to get started. Just be careful telling people you have a 100k to invest. They’ll have a 100k ways for you to spend it. Do your analysis and determine what is best for you. Feel free to DM me. 

@Dennis Rogov I agree with the others. You are all over the place. You are chasing home runs. You’ve been involved in some successful flips, it seems, but evidently that is too slow for you. You are swinging for the fences with all these ventures and missing out on base hits. 

Choose something that works—go back to your flips, or start as a small time landlord, etc—and grow it. 

@Matt Sora you’ve got some excellent responses here, especially by @Nathan Gesner. As a rule of thumb, the fewer units you have, the more you need and reserve per unit.

Think of reserves as being self insured. And Insurance is about probability. If you have one rental, a single family home, there may be a low probability that you’ll need to dip into reserves to cover non-payment or major repair on any given month, but obviously a 100% probability that if you do it affects all of your rentals, that is, your one rental. If you have 45 units, like I do, there is a high probability that I’m going to have to cover some non-payment or major repair expense every month, but it is highly unlikely that that is going to be true for all my properties, let alone more than 2.

@Jason R. Besanceney Two things can make a deal, price or terms. Generally it is either or. Either you get a good price but you have to offer cash or strong financing, or you get great terms, like seller financing or sub-to, but you buy at full price or even a premium. Occasionally you’ll get both but you’re already looking for a needle in a haystack looking for one or the other.

For seller financing, the owner will have to have equity. Often these are D class, lower value, high cash flow properties. Beware! And they are probably going to want a down payment to show you have skin in the game. They’ll sell at a premium to you and basically be the bank, holding the mortgage. 

I never liked these because basically you are married to the property. You may be able to refi out at a better interest rate but you’ll have to hold onto the property for years before you can sell high enough to get your money back.

This is actually a timely discussion as I have a number of acquisitions that I’ve needed to fill this fall.

I haven’t done anything different except wait longer for the right tenant. Home sales are 1/3 what they are in the spring. And similarly the tenant pool is about 1/3 what it is in the spring. It is temping to take a less qualified tenant and I’ve done that in the past and learned from my mistake. As long as it is competitive in the market and an attractive property, there is no reason to make any other changes. It just may take longer to get the right tenant. 

@Breanne Lemons it depends on the pending institution. Many has “seasoning” periods if six months or a year. Smaller and local institutions often do not. I am buying a property tomorrow and will refi out of it within two weeks with a small regional bank. The legwork of the refi was begun almost immediately after going under contract for cash purchase. Even better, this bank does loan to value, so I’ll be getting back over 90% of my purchase price. 

@Samantha Mosquera It’s always price.

If my flips are not getting on average one viewing a day, I’ll drop the price at least 5%, sometimes up to 10% within a week.

I’ll repeat this process until either I get a good cadence of views and now I’m looking for one offer for every ten views, or until I decide it would make more sense for me to refi out and rent it.

You’ve controlled the variables that you can control. It looks great but is abutting an eyesore. You should have dropped the price right away. Now the listing is stale and that too might be scaring off would-be buyers. Drop it now, at least 10%. 

@Emma Powlin sellers are basically going to generally take the highest offer, unless they are close, then they are going to go with the safest offer. So if someone made a similar offer but had a conventional mortgage contingency or better yet, made a cash offer, they'd go with that. They only way to compete is to offer at least 5% more.

And you are not competing with investors.  These deals don't work for investors.  You are competing with homeowners, some who may be coming from more expensive areas like NY City for whom 200k cash is nothing.

If you are ready to buy you are welcome to PM me.  I have a couple of houses coming up in that range and selling without using a realtor would make your offer a bit more attractive.