All Forum Posts by: Michael Lucero

Why are you assuming this is a "bubble". It's not comparable at all to what happened ~10-12 years ago, that was greed, oversight, under-regulation, rule-breaking, stupidity (on both consumers and banks). Yes there are a few things that you note, such as the DTI, credit bureaus, etc. but that doesn't mean there is a bubble to pop. Furthermore, if it did "pop", there's no way you're going to see the drop that occurred last time. That was a systemic, nearly game-ending failure on a global financial scale.

Hi Gary, this really depends on the type of REIA meeting. From your post, I'm going to assume you are new to REI. If the meeting is for beginners, which I doubt, then you can ask a bunch of open ended things about REIA and for someone to explain the various avenues to go down. If it's not a beginner specific meeting, you probably don't want to be asking these types of questions and you should listen and learn more before you start asking any questions during the group presentation/meeting. Most REIA meetings come in 1 of 2 forms, with or without a sales pitch for the club or service. If it's a general REIA meeting for an area, there probably won't be any pitch and the meeting is used to educate the attendees on a topic and to network.

Either way, the agenda is something like this: there is typically a room and a stage, people shuffle into the seats, then sometimes there are introductions of everyone in the room (you give your name and experience or interest in REI), then the presentation starts and you sit/listen, and are allowed to ask related questions throughout. If you don't know a lot about the topic, I would refrain from asking many questions and just take notes and do some research later. Then there is typically a Q&A session at the end as well. Then there is networking, which should be a good time for you. During the intros and based on peoples' questions they ask, you can identify the people that appear to be successful. If you want, you can go introduce yourself and say you are new, trying to educate yourself, and would love to hear how they got started, chose their specific niche. Some people may go into it, while others may not want to talk about it, but for the most they typically will talk. Don't try and act like your know something you don't or anything like that, just be real and say you are learning etc. because at the end of the day, that is the truth.

 Lol

Of course you can, you are a legal adult. Even if you weren't, such as 16, you could buy property if you had enough money.

How would a laundromat do, is this a lower, mid, or higher end complex. Would people use it, you could profit. Put a cending machine and atm machine as well, ask for revenue sharing from the atm provider.

What do you mean by stock trading. Day trading? If so, run the other way, fast. With trading stocks just buy into an index or mutual fund, or a few companies you beleive in and leave it long term, dont try and outsmart the market using graphs, charts etc, its all garbage. Why do you think no asset manager has consistently beat the return of the s&p 500, because its based on luck. Personally i invest my money in a somewhat diversified portfolio of big tech stocks, amazon, facebook, google, apple, netflix, alibaba. Together these companies are the future and will buy up any competitors, and therefore their stock will go up. 

Using other peoples money to invest is a good way to create wealth, except its way more risky to do that in securities than in real estate. I only use leverage in real estate.

Isnt this a personal, subjective question based on what you want for yourself? Personally i would do whatever increases my net worth the most, let go of any pride and ego. If it means doing something with your father and profits way more, do that. There is always time to do something on your own. If on the other hand the thing on your own is more profitable, do that, there should be more time to do something with your father. 

You do not have to have a real estate profession (agent, broker, etc) to be active, it's just hard to do so when you have a separate, unrelated job. So yes, you can be in a class of active investor with a separate job if you hit both of the targets below.

There are two criteria:

A taxpayer will be considered a real estate professional if (1) more than one-half of the total personal services the taxpayer performs in trades or businesses are performed in real property trades or businesses in which the taxpayer materially participates and (2) the taxpayer performs more than 750 hours of services during the tax year in real property trades or businesses in which the taxpayer materially participates

Of course you can get a better deal with all cash, however, that doesn't mean you will get a better deal. It's completely subjective to the seller, their situation, the market, how quickly they need to close, how risk averse they are to the financing falling through on better offers, etc. Basically the all cash means a quicker close and no risk of financing falling through with no bank underwriting and delays. This speaks to some people, whereas others it means nothing when time/patience is on their side.

Google search would really help on this one. At the end of the day you just need to obtain some sort of debt and pay it off consistently and it will go up. There really isn't a magic formula. 

You haven't provided enough information to really answer strategically. Do you have $100 or $10M in cash, do you make $25K or $800K a year? Do you currently have any debt? What assets do you have?

Basically what you want to do is start paying off debt, either that you have, or go obtain some debt via credit cards. If you don't have much income and cant qualify for a credit card, sometimes local banks have secured credit cards where it's collateralized by some assets you do own.