All Forum Posts by: Matt Maurice

Investment Info:

Industrial buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $835,000
Cash invested: $50,000

35,000 sq ft flex building

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

I was looking to move my residential portfolio into a commercial building via 1031.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

Broker brought me the deal & negotiated the price

How did you finance this deal?

Commercial lending

How did you add value to the deal?

Better management and site layout, moving a few tenants around and creating more efficient common areas to increase the rentable square footage.

What was the outcome?

So far... it's a straight forward cash cow.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Bigger the project, the bigger the budget for improvements. $100k only got 1/4 of the roof, and site work will be about that as well.

I always suggest to folks that house hacking and/or investing in your local market is THE only way to get started in REI. Real estate will always be skewed to the local market expert. Investing out of state is more difficult than most folks realize. If you have a track record of vetting top-level vendors, managing regular KPI's and willing to spend countless hours to become an expert on that market... then go for it. If it's attractive solely because you can't afford a house in your local market, I'd suggest saving up a bigger down payment. Low money down out of state goes bad real quick.

If you insist on the OOS investing model, then it all starts with your property manager.  Agents tend to be transactional, but your manager will be with you for the long haul (if they are good).  Vet them, get referrals specific to what you are trying to achieve, and be patient.  Despite what a few folks here have said, there are good PMs out there but like any vendor, the good ones are the minority.

Sincerely wishing you the best of luck!

As per the usual, I couldn't agree more with @Marcus Auerbach!

Freshwater, sports, culture, entertainment, trails, lakes, and population during COVID is going up! We have all the amenities of a big city without the negatives of one.   Let's see you get from one end of Chicago to the other in 15 minutes... 

If you can deal with a little cold & snow, it's a nice trade for no hurricanes & earthquakes.

@Richard Sherman how does this not have comments? Bueller?

There's a lot of opportunity for buy and hold in Milwaukee especially if you are willing to take on some light rehab. A great property manager should be able to coordinate any repairs needed. The market has seen appreciation over the last few years and there are a growing number of renters.

Managing from a distance is doable if you have a solid team and Milwaukee has lots of resources for out-of-state investors.

The Milwaukee market has seen a lot of growth over the last few years and has not slowed down in recent months. It's a great mid-sized city with a strong and growing renters' market. It will see more growth as people move out of big cities and look to places with a lower cost of living. We've also got great resources for out-of-state investors.  

Another vote for Storehouse 310, those guys deliver an awesome product.  Talk to @Stuart Grazier

As someone else mentioned, definitely join the Brew City REI Club Facebook group. They host an event every month. Milwaukee REIA is another great group for networking.

Thanks for the shout out @Rebecca Knox

Hazel - Happy to help however I can, feel free to reach out.

Ooo this will be fun to see all of the locals from each City fight for fame!  I'm game...

A snip-it from a post I did on this thread about investing in Wisconsin: 

Milwaukee is sitting on some of the most affordable housing in the country, is adjacent to one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world, has entertainment & food that rivals every major metro, it's sports teams bat way above average for a small market which attracts hundreds of thousands if not millions of people here annually, economic development has been happening at a level unprecedented since the '50s (we are breaking ground on the world's largest mass timber building in June), has a tech ecosystem on the ground floor of attracting major talents with partners from the fortune 500 companies in town...