All Forum Posts by: J Salter

Hey @Steven Marks, I think it'll be ok, the real estate market is one of the purest out there.

People are all upset about falling home prices but they are only shifting in line closer to where they should be.

Government interference (different from regulation!) has warped the market so hard (Pres. Bush 2003 American Dream Downpayment) and (Pres. Obama's 8K house tax rebate)

We as investors just have to position ourselves to deal with this since it will very likely be repeated in the future on the next leg down...

@Gary Li, consult your CPA (disclaimer) but generally yea, LLC's the way to go I would say mainly based on the legal benefit of liability divisions and limitations with LLCs (Since you have a few properties, greater risk of legal suits)

Also, its good having a Real Estate related name for reporting to collections agency so others recognized that a tenant had conflicts with a previous landlord.

@Tony Colquett you should never assume everything he says is true. Bad start. As @Daniel Doran says, verify leases w/ tenant, their balance of payments, inspection etc... probably more to it than you initially thought

@Steve Babiak, I'm not so good at retelling jokes so looks like that analogy was no different!

The point I wanted to make was that investor would obviously want to invest in a town where there are more investors (hence money/liquidity) with which to interact with. It does no good in the end if you own 88% of the property in a town and you want to sell out of the town or liquidate for whatever reason.

Therefore, it is beneficial to train and share experiences and knowledge. That's what this site is about and that's how you build economies.

@Sherry Lewis, have you tried this www.titlesearch.com site?

If so how do you rate their service, seems pretty legit after going through their site.

I presume the $99.95 option is the optimal and standard choice for most.

@Zak Kazanski, I don't really get that sophisticated with my research. I have a simple excel format I use for evaluating houses from a first-look value perspective.

If you use the tabs at the bottom of excel, it shouldn't be hard to organize your marketing analysis on paper. I would just advise you to watch some youtube vids on basic excel and keep practicing, you'll get used to it.

@Minh L. is totally right that to say that you @Alex E. should embrace your competition and that obviously too much competition is not good. THere is a balance. But you'd rather have more competition than too little.

There is the matter of liquidity in a real estate market. Say if there were a town of 50,000 units and 30,000 investors; this is preferable than 25,000 investors in a town with 75,000 units. The second market mentioned would likely be less flexible and harder to make deals in. Because remember that in RE the cash money under the asset is figuratively in the bank and if a recession comes and you can't find any one with the credit or assets then you will be wishing you had built up (taught) your competition to interact with your investment activity.

Thanks guys, just every thing I initially researched favored rust belt... perhaps they were articles published after the housing collapse and the prices and prospects were more optimistic...

Curious where people see better opportunities generally speaking

Simple question. Why do RE investors seem to have a bias towards the Rust belt vs the Sun belt. Sort of new to real estate so I was a little jaded to see this trend in articles.

Is it because values are expected to rise in the longer term versus the sun belt or what?

I can think of Pros/Cons on both sides but fill me in yall!

About 8 times outta 10, the owner or the lien (mortgagee) will redeem if the property is worth it and the cash can be found. Also the owner and lien holders will receive a ton of notices [at tax time] that the taxes are due... If there is a mortgage the bank aint gonna let it go unless they fail.

This is what makes tax liens great. The problem is that your money is so illiquid and you have to mind changes in laws, the condition of the property, and violations on property.

Keep me posted on your strategy @Will Sifert, I am pursuing a similar one... higher risk though I believe. We can talk about that privately!