All Forum Posts by: Michael K Gallagher

@Adam Macias very much appreciate the analogy as well.  I have nothing but good things to say about the featured agent program as a member so send anyone with questions my way if needed.

also a fitting post because here in the midwest it is that planting time of year.  I've got a good bunch of seeds popping under the LED in the basement getting ready to go outside any day now.  Hoping for a break in the weather to get them in the ground in the next couple weekends.  

@Jordan Moorhead   this is a great meetup concept!  might have to blatantly steal it from you for my market!

if you have an insurance broker or rep I'd just have them shop it for you.  it shouldn't be a different process from getting your standard home owner's insurance.

If you don't have a rep in your market yet, worth asking some coworkers for suggestions or I'm sure some specific investor friendly reps will poke there heads up here shortly.  But in general it shouldn't be a more cumbersome process because its a duplex vs a single family.  At least in my experience with house hacking personally.  

@Scott Trench very specific (to your point) to the submarket and asset class.  In general the well priced, nicely finished single familys in strong schools are still selling pretty quick.  But here closer to down town for example we've done several deals lately where the leverage has certainly switched to the buyer and they are able to get concessions or credits and even price reductions.  Currently in contract on a deal that ended up appraising for about 14% over what we are in contract for, and I can't even tell you the last time I saw a delta like that on a purchase appraisal.

Love this sentiment, @Jeremy Beland I am a professional avoider, and prer, so this reminder is much appreciated.  

@Grace Tapfuma I think it is very asset class and operator specific.  If you are trying to find data metrics to track and make a sort of "index" for if a market is favorable to flipping or not...I have some ideas.

1) you could look at homes on the MLS that are recently sold, and you can set filters to capture "flips" based on previous price and previous date transacted for the property.

2) You could look at general home price appreciation is specific markets or sub markets of interest.  

3) you could also look and track things like permit timing, or costs of construction/rehab to gain an understanding of the "spread".  With enough data you could break down a market into an "average distresses sale price PSF" then you could have a "average sale price PSF" and Average cost of construction PSF, but to get to that level you likely need to be running flips and tracking your own metrics to gather it.  or working inside a flipping company I suppose.

But like I said you could likely be successful flipping in any market, if you operate correctly and know your numbers.  

@Jackie Lambert brandon has a couple that are on this topic, he calls it the stack I believe.  What you are describing has been discussed many places, I anticipate there are several books out there that would walk them through a similar process.

The real move in my mind is to do what you are describing but with 2-4 unit buildings so you get the income as offsets sooner. 

@Kevin Van Ness thanks so much for sharing!  and for taking the time to write it.  I think you like most people that actually stay in this industry for the long term realize its not all that passive when you are the one managing and handling things, but at the same time, there is no substitute in my mind for self managing a portfolio.  Sure their are good managers and hybrid approaches but you still end up involved to some degree no matter what.  

If you're done with the "work" portion of it mentally I don't think there is anything wrong with selling off all or part of the portfolio and moving those proceeds into something more passive, and I'd go as far as to say that doesn't even need to be real estate.  But there is much you can do in real estate that's more passive obviously.

I'm with you in that I'd want to either start hiring a team and making it a "company" of my own, where Im not involved as much rather than hand it off to a manager.  If that kind of work excites you or feels light, you've got a pretty great leg up and book of knowledge to scale this thing to a "family office" type thing.  

But again no shame in throwing it all in the market and living off the interest either!

@John Neil Stanback I don't personally have a "go to" but this is for sure something people do.  I've toured many projects that have security.  I think the most common one I've seen in our market is a system called "tatle tale" but I've also seen many simpli safes.  As far as getting wifi I think most people either get it installed for a short period or use a "hot spot" type product.

@Danny Green this is a forum for education, if you're asking how you can prospect specific buyers for a certain type of deal I'm sure there a several people here that would weight in. If you've got an active deal you are slangin as they say...I believe BP still has a classifieds section you can post it on.