All Forum Posts by: Mark Vejnar

Buy the cheapest piece of raw land you can afford (or a mobile home) and pay all cash. Then figure out what to do with it. That'll get you moving. Give yourself a full day to go to the county/city and do due diligence. Then pull the trigger.

Good point on the asbestos. Evidently it was commonly used in firebricks, chimney flue, and mortar on chimneys. Good to know if you decide to do any demo.

Beautiful!

Pinterest. :-D I always wanted to do submarine-style berthing w/coffin lockers in the 3br where the 3rd br isn't really big enough to be a bedroom. Stack two up high with a desk underneath - with rails of course. And ladders. But we never got around to it.

While hucksters abound, I think the practice has more to do with impact and significance. There is a sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from being able to tap into your own knowledge and experience when someone else needs help. And whether you give that help in the public arena, in full view of others, or quietly over coffee, the legacy created in those moments goes beyond wealth. Warren Buffett's legacy will not be the wealth he has created for shareholders. It will be the knowledge and expertise shared in his letters to shareholders - much as Ben Graham left The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis (both of which, directly or indirectly, have influenced everyone in the world if real estate). I think this is why there are so many in real estate willing to share despite the scarcity mindset of others.

Read the HUD pages concerning mobile homes and mobile home parks. It'll only take you 10 minutes but will save you hours later when the phone starts ringing. My grandparent and parents owned and operated a 90 unit mobile home park. Call the parks in your area (yellow pages) and discuss your market and what your buyer is looking for. Financing is really tough on mobiles and repossession is, in most cases, fairly straightforward. This is why Lonnie deals work so well. You should probably read Lonnie's book "Deals on Wheels" or any book by him if you have interest in this niche. It's a great primer on the culture and explains Lonnie Scruggs's approach to investing.

@Tony Johnson I did catch the moving-to-Asia part. Sometimes it's nice to have foreign income - whether or not he chooses to domesticate it. We lived in the uk for a while and although the exchange rate was brutal we essentially lived off of dollars. 

I wonder if he'll change his mind as his move gets closer. Something like what @David Oldenburg suggested could certainly add to his retirement - though the lump sum would also be quite nice. 

Follow demand. Do you have access to MLS - if so, use that to determine which zip codes are drawing the highest number of buyers. I believe you may be able to export your results to MatLab which will enable you to break out some serious trends with relative ease - but I don't know your MLS so... A wholesaler I know uses listsource to select zip codes but I don't know anything about using that site. I think there is a thread on that in here somewhere. And probably a YouTube video - there are, after all, YouTube videos for everything.

Is he open to owner financing? Could you do as Raj Gandhi suggested but do a 30yr note for $240k@3% and then you owner finance to an end buyer for market value w/10-20% down at a higher interest rate? Say 7%? I'm asking here - not suggesting. Please teach me. I think I heard Wendell De Guzman do something like this.

In general it's probably a good idea to widen your margin of safety. As we all know, before the downturn many novice investors banked on appreciation trusting market forces to give them their margin over time - but the market went the other way. I saw many investors go belly up - some going as far as to ask appraisers to fudge a value so they could refi out of hard money.  Ben Graham advocates a 25% margin of safety. 30% or more is prudent. The wider the better IMO.