All Forum Posts by: Bill R.

Listen to the BP podcasts.  

Many times, trying to educate yourself too much is a crutch and since you're never going to know everything, gives you a reason to delay making investments.  Analysis paralysis.  

For instance, are you getting your RE license because you truly enjoy selling RE?  Are you the type who likes sales?  

If you love selling, great. More power to you. But if you're getting your RE license because you want to be an investor, I'm not sure that may be the best move. Sure, there are some advantages (MLS access, acting as your own agent) to holding a license but there are disadvantages as well (you're held to a different legal standard in deals). If all you're looking for in a RE license is access to the MLS and to lower your transaction costs, it seems way better to just do a deal than to go through the whole licensing process. Because a good chunk of what you have to learn to get a RE license has no bearing on whether or not something is a good investment.

Listen to the BP podcasts.  You don't need 50 different other podcasts.  If you listen to every show, you'll know as much about RE as you need to:

a)  Do most any deal you might want to do

b)  Know what other podcasts you might want to listen to

They're on show 191 and each show is about an hour.  That's 191 hours of education from people from all corners of the business.  

Unless you listen and say, "OMG, these guys are horrible.  I can't stand that @Brandon Turner's voice" or something like that, personally, I don't think you're going to do any better elsewhere.  

Yes, there are some people who do podcasts that are laser focused on a particular niche but based on what you said in the OP you don't seem to really have a niche yet which is why I say that by listening to the BP podcast you'll learn what other podcasts you should be listening to.  You'll be able to figure out your niche, hear some people being interviewed who also have their own podcasts, and you can take your education to the next level from there.  

Your drive is what, half hour no traffic, an hour or hour and a half with traffic?  Let's say you can consume 2 hours a day of podcasts.  You've got over 3 months of roundtrip listening.  Technically more since you probably don't commute on weekends and they'll be producing more content during those 3 months.  

I've never actually checked but let's say 1 out of 10 guests has their own podcast and you already know they're experts in their niche.  That's another 19 potential podcasts you'll have been introduced to and can add to your listening.  

I was listening to one of the BP podcasts the other day, it was with Tom Krol, I believe but I might be wrong, and I loved his advice that if someone told you that they had taken one of your family members hostage and you had to get a deal under contract within 72 hours, you probably wouldn't spend your time worrying about getting your website perfect or how your business cards looked.  

Get the basics down and then don't waste your time trying to know everything about everything until you get some deals under your belt.  More podcasts aren't going to put dollars in your pocket if you aren't doing deals.  The only thing more podcasts will do is give you an excuse for not pulling the trigger.  

I agree but the other side of that argument is that (in theory) the oversight on funds like this is far less stringent than on a mutual fund or other investments that do not require accredited investors.  

Similarly, it mitigates the risk of the fund somewhat.  It's one thing to tell an accredited investor that he's purchasing an illiquid or complex asset and deal with claims of not knowing what he was doing and an entirely different thing if some 80 year old pensioner says the same thing.  

Back in another life I was involved in the stock/bond brokerage industry and while I don't always agree, I can see the logic behind it.   

Much appreciated.  Interesting stuff.  

 If you don't mind me asking, where did you get this chart from?  Just curious.  

I know I'm jumping in late here but . . . the principles of real estate investment, while generally the same, can be radically different in application in Thailand.  

As you noted, you're limited to condos because foreigners can't own land.  And most (if not all) Thai banks have no interest in dealing with you unless you're buying a condo for your own living purposes.  

Also, be very careful about "working" in Thailand without a work permit.  There is no real definition of what constitutes work so even rearranging furniture in the furnished condo you intend on renting out could be considered work and if you were caught doing it without a work permit you could be deported and banned from re-entering the country.  

Think it's a little far fetched?  Well, just look at what kind of incentive that you give others to report you. Have a tenant who you evicted?  Maybe as retaliation he might just snap some pics of you working on the condo to get it back in rentable state.  Have somebody that owes you money and they don't want to pay it back?  Hope they don't catch you doing anything that could be considered working.  Their debt gets erased as soon as you're put on a plane back home.  

I've met a few guys in Thailand doing what you want to do.  Most are self-financing their deals and-or working with capital raised amongst other expats that they know and trust.  

To be honest, if it were me (and I do plan on investing in the region at some point), I would invest elsewhere in Asia where your money is more welcome.  Thailand's climate for foreign investment is not great.  You can make Thailand work but look around.  You may be able to do what you want to do in a far more appealing business environment.  

I know I'm coming to this thread a bit late but as you probably know by now, foreigners (you don't look Thai) are prohibited from buying land in Thailand.  You can purchase condos because the land is still owned by Thais but owning the land itself is prohibited so that makes flipping and other strategies quite difficult as you can only own the property sitting on the land.  

There are questionable ways around those laws though.  For instance, although foreigners are not allowed to own more than 49% of a business, the business can own land.  And if the other 51% of the company was owned by silent or cooperative owners, technically you could own the land.  

Still problematic though as every so often someone in the Thai government gets a stick in his craw about foreigners owning Thai land and will look for suspicious holdings like this and then just seize the land.  

Could be done if you have a Thai spouse but everything has to be 100% in the spouses name and you have to sign an affidavit stating that this money being used to purchase the property is 100% your spouses' property and you hold no claims to it.  

Once you get the ownership sorted out, you'll have to deal with Thai contractors.  Not exactly an easy task and one where you would probably be best to be on-site every minute they are there in order to supervise the work.  I have heard more than a few horror stories of people trying to do construction on a retirement home (purchased in the spouses' name) and ending up with horrible results because they did not supervise the builders.  

Also, expect a ton of bureaucracy.  And all the forms and various permits you'll need to fill out will be entirely in Thai with no English translation.  

And if you want your paperwork to move through the system, expect to pay some bribes along the way.  

Lastly, unless you have a Thai spouse or can arrange for an investment loan from overseas, all deals will need to be cash.  Foreigners can't own land so there's zero market for foreigner mortgages.  

So, is it impossible?  No.  People can do anything they put their mind to.  :-)  It's just a lot more complicated and involved than many people might initially think.  

But in terms of hassle, the condo market is probably a better flipping opportunity for you.  I have met several people who specialize in buying and renting condos and they seem to do fairly well with it.  Obviously if you can pick up the language, that will go a long way in helping you succeed.  

Welcome @David Soria 

Sounds like we have similar backgrounds.  I moved from Irvine to Las Vegas about a year ago.  Couldn't believe the massive difference in prices.  

And like you, I tend towards over-analization :-)  BP can be a blessing and a curse for people prone to that.  So much great information and helpful people but there's so much information you can find yourself bogged down trying to learn everything.  

I'm getting over that and getting ready to jump in.  Get the basics down and then jump in when you're ready.  

On the topic of carrying a gun as a weapon, also keep in mind that a handgun is not an easy weapon to control in a high-stress situation.  I recently ran across the story below about a cop who shot an unarmed man at a gas station and from just a few feet away the officer shot 4 or 5 shots at the guy and only grazed the guy in the leg.  I don't mean to say "only" to downplay the injuries the unarmed man received, but to highlight the fact that even a trained police officer can fire off 4 or 5 shots at a target from 10 feet away and miss the target when stress levels are high.  

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/dashcam-shows-co...

And, someone who wishes to do you harm isn't going to signal their intentions and let you reach into your purse or in your jacket and draw your weapon.  He (or she) is far more likely to pounce when you're in a vulnerable position like when you're fiddling with keys to get a door unlocked.  

As someone that Uncle Sam paid good money to become proficient in firing everything from handguns to anti-tank weapons, I'm hardly anti-guns.  I just think that as @Joel Owens pointed out, having a weapon on you that you don't know how to use or it giving you false sense of security is, IMHO, more dangerous from being completely unarmed.  

Also, on #4 - I don't like being negative by being blunt but the chances of you being abducted for any length of time are pretty low (i.e. where you would be listed as "missing" as this agent is).  Children, yes.  Adults, not so much.  Although there are 2300 missing person reports filed per day in the US, only 6% of missing persons reports are filed on adults.  Of that 6%, a good majority of them involve substance abuse or dementia.  

If you are victim of a violent crime, the motive is usually robbery or rape (or both) which sometimes escalates to murder.  By the time someone is worried enough to contact law enforcement, the crime has already been committed.  

I use Basecamp at my non-REI job. Decent. It will help you keep track of things but if your needs ever increase in complexity, you're going to need something better.

You have to understand the mindset of the team behind Basecamp.  It's mostly people approaching a software engineering problem from a software engineering point of view.  Software engineers tend to hate too much structure and planning (I've worked in/around software development for 20+ years).

So, many features common in project management software are missing in Basecamp because philosophically the people behind it don't believe them to be necessary.  That might become problematic when you need to determine a project's critical path (the sequence of events that have the most impact on the final completion of a project) or forecast schedule variance and the impact it will have on the project delivery. 

Unfortunately, most of the really good tools for project management are either prohibitively expensive or years behind the times in terms of being cloud accessible (often both).  That's why I use Basecamp at work :-)  

I'm not sure I could make Basecamp work for me in a rehab/flip situation.  A lot of the philosophical things the people who create Basecamp try to avoid, seem to me to be very essential when time = money.  

My suggestion would be to use a more powerful project management tool like Microsoft Project for your tracking purposes and to then create a weekly task list from that which you can load up into something like Basecamp.  It's more time consuming but you'll have much better control over the project using the better management software and you'll gain the ease of use and communication that Basecamp provides for people who aren't necessarily experts in project management (i.e. contractors).  

Really nice job.  Congrats!