All Forum Posts by: Derek Morrison

I'm interested in purchasing a small apartment complex that doesn't seem to be very well-run. If the current landlord provides me documents (ie rent roll, expenses) but their records aren't kept well and the docs are probably wrong, will I have trouble getting bank financing for such a property?

@John Warren How do you know the difference between returns "on paper" vs. in "real life"? Obviously, the initial analysis is done 'on paper', but how would you know what the 'real-life' returns are until you bought it?

*For the purpose of this post, assume "investing" to mean "buy and hold large multifamily apartments", and "developing" to be large commercial or large multifamily (not single-family)*

Investing and developing both require extensive market analysis to ensure that the area you plan to have property in is a sensible location. You'll be spending many hours looking at stats: job growth, population movements, economic factors, and more. Given that you'll already be putting in lots of hours doing research, consider the following questions:

1. Which do you think is a better strategy for wealth building, relative to the risk involved?

2. What do you consider to be the pros and cons of each strategy?

3. Which strategy would you choose if money (the initial outlay) was of no concern? (i.e. you have the cash for either)

I'd love to get your feedback on this. I want to pick one strategy and stick with it more or less as my bread and butter approach and stay focused on being the best at one thing, rather than bouncing back and forth between strategies.

 Well here's the thing, I'm not sure what I need to learn, so I'm not sure where to even begin. I've read several books on investing from BP but I don't know where to go from here

So there's a property I'm looking into purchasing. I sent the seller's agent an Email just saying that I was interested in the property, and they wrote back asking if I'd be free sometime soon to talk. The problem is, I'm new and have no idea what to say or ask during the call. I know this question is probably very broad, but do you have any general advice?

Thanks everyone for the feedback. It seems like "other local investors" or "lender" are the top suggestions!

As a new investor who hasn't done a deal, who is the first person I should talk to? An agent, a lawyer, a contractor, a lender, etc.? I don't want anyone to look at me and assume I'm wasting their time because I'm sure other people have done so before.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I reached out to the agent to get more info

• A New Development (supposed to be done in 2020)
• 30+ units (mix of studio, 1/1, and 2/2)
• Renting between $975 - $1200 per month (about $34,000 per month for all units)
• The list price is around $900,000

Certainly I must be missing something? Is this the price for land, and then I have construction costs as well?

So I'm, trying to analyze a market to invest in. I've heard that job growth and population growth are two important factors (i.e. you don't want to invest in a town where the population is declining 7% per year and job growth is negative).

Here's what I'm wondering:

Let's say you look at historical data and finding that Houston, Texas had 15% population growth (for example) over the past 5 years. Ignoring other factors, is that good? Or does it mean that you missed the bus for investing in Houston, and the population growth is likely to slow and regress towards the mean? I know there's a lot of factors involved in determining a market's desirability for investments, but on a very basic scale, is finding historical data that reveals such strong metrics in a market a sign to invest, or does it signal that the market is now hot?