All Forum Posts by: Marina Wong

Just asked someone who might have first hand experience of not having a bank account and he said if you have a friend or family, you can always endorse the check over to them and they can pay you cash. I guess problem solved and I won't feel bad.

I am in exactly the same situation and I do feel bad that my tenant needs to pay the bank to get the money. Moreover, she was recently robbed and I am not even sure she has any ID remaining. But I like the bad guy method. Actually I tell my kids all the time to use me against any peer pressure: If my mom finds out she would kill me. So yeah bad guys method should be used often.

I recently heard of Rhino. One of the syndicators mentioned that to me. I asked another syndicator and she uses Lease Lock. So apparently syndicators are using these products to help with managing large portfolios. If it is good enough for them, it should be good enough for us smaller landlords.

I am not sure if it will make tenants less responsible but Rhino (not sure of Lease Lock) is supposed to work like an insurance of security deposit. I will know more once I attend their webinar. You can go to their website to request a call.

Not sure what happened to your deal 10 months ago, I only want to tell you not to invest in office condo. I sold our office building (not condo) in May 2021 and we had a good capital gain. I sold our office condo Nov 2020 and we had a loss. My husband used both places as his office. We also rented out part of the office building. The commercial broker who sold our office building told me office condo is really not a good investment. I hope you will steer clear of office condo investment. If you have a business and need a place, that's a different story.

Also not sure what you define as great cash on cash return. I have a friend who used to invest in commercial properties only (office, retail etc) and he told me these properties don't appreciate much (maybe nominal appreciation but not real appreciation) so he requires good CoC return. I asked him to look at a medical building in Orlando that's giving 6+% CoC NNN and he said that's not good enough. He requires double digit CoC, which is very difficult to find these days.

I have invested in multiple syndication deals with different syndicators. Almost all of them have an investor portal for you to upload documents, sign documents, get your K1 etc. In short, everything is done very professionally. Recently I was introduced by a capital raiser to a family office sponsored deal. I am a bit shocked to find out they don't have an investor portal. I asked them why they don't have one and their answer is this is a small deal and they don't have that many investors for this deal. They have used investor portal / platform in the past. Would this be a red flag for you? 

I have heard a few of the syndictors I invest with also use Appfolio. 

I am in the process of helping a client to rent her house. Because client had section 8 before, she wanted to rent to section 8 people. However, we found out that section 8 doesn't pay the rent she asked for, which is already slightly lower than market. She is not allowed to ask for the difference. With home price going up, a lot of landlords are selling and all the section 8 inquiries are from these people losing the rental houses. I think the system is simply not a good system. If the tenants are allowed to pay the difference, it will make everyone's life easier. Another thing that I really don't like about the system is a family of one adult and 3 kids is allowed to get a 3 bedroom but if they cannot find a 3 bedroom, they can get a 4 bedroom. Growing up, I shared the same bedroom with my younger brother all the way till 17 or so. I would rather the government pay market rent but give them a 2 bedroom voucher, for example. 

@Betty Klein My daughter looked for an apartment last year and Zumper kept sending us listings. So I know at least it will promote to renters aggressively. In the past, when I list on mls (I am an agent ), it will automatically get included in Trulia, hotpads (these 2 were where I get most of the inquiries) and other websites. But this is not happening anymore and I have to manually post on Zumper, Apartments, Zillow. Zillow will post on hotpads and Trulia, it seems. I have posted several today but the listings are still pending.

OMG. I had a policy with him for 2 years. This year when we renewed, we went thru an attorney as it is a joint venture property. He took our money (down payment) now our policy is canceled. He did not return my call or email. When the attorney's secretary emailed him to see where the money went (we only recently found out about this and the policy was supposed to be renewed in April) He did not send in the money that my attorney wired him earlier this year resulting in our policy cancellation. Now I look bad because it was an agency that I gave my attorney. I really don't know what to do. And it is a lot of money for this property. He did however get us the coverage for previous years because I have received letters from insurance companies asking us to remove moss on roof one time and repair a loose cap (maybe some kind of vent cap or chimney cap) another time. I wonder what happened to him this year.

@Kamal Khetrapal   opportunitydb.com has many OZ related topics and Ashley talks regularly on the podcast. I think his company help people set up OZ funds. Andersonadvisors.com (many apartment syndication podcast hosts have invited them to talk) also does OZ funds but I think they are more expensive. The Anderson team definitely is very knowledgeable about real estate.