All Forum Posts by: Michael Haas

@Jordan Barnes nice work! I agree with your thoughts on finding a Rockstar Agent. Agents are like drivers - just because they have a license doesn't mean they're any good. 

Too many folks hire their best friend's sister's teacher's neice who is a part time agent and part time Instagram Influencer, or some other nonsense, then wonder why they ended up with a bad result lol.

@Rylan Lacey I'm with Julie here - no good answers for you, but this is a strategy we're following closely. We own enough land near Orange County to build 28 homes (long story how that came to be haha), and have bounced back and forth on whether to sell, build-then-sell, or build-then-rent (which is looking very appealing at today's interest rates).

Seattle is pretty stable. The only rents I've seen decreasing are in the downtown core for large apartment complexes and condo's - in all the neighborhoods outside of downtown rents remain steady or increase. Home prices are up around 10% YoY here in Seattle and projected to increase another 6-10% in 2021. There continue to be massive net-inflows of residents to the city and suburbs.

All rentals I've listed since Covid have had multiple applicants. I've never seen so many people lining up to invest in the Greater Seattle Metro. I think a downturn will come at some point, but there's a lot of momentum pushing rents and prices higher right now. 

Great writeup @Gabriel Graumann - thanks for sharing the process and conversation points! We do a bit of off-market as well with a similar approach, but hadn't ever thought of using this same approach when working with listing agents & on market sellers. Great move!

@Gabriel Graumann nice work on this one! How do you pitch meeting in person to the Listing Agent? With the market as hot as it is I'd imagine you hit some resistance, more from the LA than the Seller, to meeting in person at the property.

Appreciate any experience you can share. Cheers!

@Kristi Kautz for YoY appreciation I was just talking about average sales prices (adjusted for square footage). Here in the Seattle area Brokerages, the MLS and the King County Realtors Association regularly publish that sort of data. You could also probably figure it out yourself if you were willing to pull all the (public) sales records into Microsoft Excel and do some math :).

The usually run numbers for whole cities or counties though (like the San Bernardino numbers Jason was kind enough to pull for us). The sample sizes are smaller so the data can be skewed, but I think the neighborhood-by-neighborhood appreciation numbers of specific areas, like Joshua Tree, are the most interesting! Really shows you which areas are attracting the most attention and growth in the larger county or metro market. 

Cheers,

@Jason Kudo wow - 20% YoY appreciation is no joke. As an investor though, the best time to buy a property is almost always "yesterday" :).

Small world! Scenic is a trip - half 80 year old Norwegians who have lived there off and on for decades, and half 20 & 30 something skiers and snowboarders like myself. The history of the railroad and Iron Goat is also really interesting. We love it up there.

@An Ho we're on our first househack, and as a family with a little one as well we've always prefered more residential, Single Family homes with basement ADU's and/or backyard cottage DADU rental units. Most true multifamily properties in and around Seattle are on busier streets and denser areas that might be a less appealing place to raise your family.

If I was in your shoes I would use your parent's capital to buy a single family home with either a basement ADU already in place or a good setup to build one. If there's any money left over you can ask your parents to build a backyard cabin, like those built by MyKabin.com , leaving you with a residential home for your family, a basement rental for cashflow, and a backyard cottage rental for cashflow.

Sell your Edmonds house and use your own cash to fund similar projects as straight rentals in less expensive areas (Renton, Burien, Tacoma, Everett). Take the experience from your parents home purchase and/or remodel and build on it.

I think the main advantage of this is that it keeps your parents investment and your investment separate. Since it sounds like your parents will have the home in their name, and are really allowing you to live for free until they gift it to you at some later point, this would create a great investment for them (and eventually you!) and the massive savings you'll get on living expenses will allow you to invest in similar projects on your own. 

Feel free to message me if you'd like to talk through this in more detail on the phone! I think you have two questions here: the easier question of how to invest in Real Estate both personally and through your parent's generosity, and the harder question of how exactly to structure a gift so that all parties involved are happy, while keeping that essentially separation between your parent's lives and yours. As other posters have pointed out, a no-strings-attached gift is one thing, but if this isn't that simple you'll have to communicate with your family and parents clearly to make sure things don't get messy and feelings don't get hurt. Congratulations and best of luck!

@Jason Kudo @Kristi Kautz do you know what YoY appreciation Joshua Tree has seen in the last couple years?

Jason - the STR rental market up here is still very strong, especially for "getaway" properties with Work From Home amenities. We have a STR way out in Homer, AK, and three closer to home in King County, WA: A rustic West Seattle cabin on stilts near the beach, a North Beacon Hill studio, and a partially off-grid cabin in the woods in Scenic, WA (past Skokomish, 10 minutes from Stevens Pass Ski area). The Scenic Cabin has been booked solid with lots of local post-COVID Seattle travelers.

@Anjoli Elizabeth Rowe we lived in a Tiny House in California for about a year and a half - it burned up in the most recent St Helena / Napa fires, and we're in the process of rebuilding it (on insurance's dime at least!) now. 

Tiny houses are lots of fun, but work best as STR's outside of town. Cities like Seattle and elsewhere have already banned them as both short term rentals and they've always been illegal as long term rentals.

Would love to talk to you more about Tiny Houses - I haven't met that many tiny-housers or aspiring-tiny-housers up here! We have a family now, so moved out of the tiny house but have been Househacking SFH's w/ ADU's and DADU's since then, currently on Househack #4.