All Forum Posts by: Aaron Norris

I agree with Guy. While some of the bigger players may not always attend the clubs, the more savvy clubs will know who the players are in the market. I also use tools like PropertyRadar to find who they are. Have to love the Internet! 

The Norris Group now offers a three-year program at 6.9%! That's not the "starting rate." That's actually the only long-term loan program we have now. No tricks, no games. Only two points origination and we go up to 70% LTV. These are on rented or rent-ready, non owner occupied Single family properties (1-4 units) in Southern California. You'll see our add right here on bigger pockets or on the hard money lending portion of our website. Thanks BP!

HI Brett, you're lucky as you're in an area with great investments clubs that have good networking an wonderful people. See SDCIA, NSDREI, and San Diego FIBI.  Whichever is closest.  You'll meet investor friendly people from all trades. 

California is much harder to find that 2% rule and I'll be interested to see what you come up with where the buying power is so strong and the rents are that strong and consistent. I REALLY like being able to drive by my rentals but open if the team was in place. I know there are several investor services that help that but I just get concerned they over-saturate markets and I've seen people get burned. Just be careful going out of state, especially being new.

I too used to be in the arts professionally. Don't take enough time to play any more, but real estate will help make that a possibility. I was never into the whole starving artist thing.

Welcome to BP.

I like the idea of using something like bit.ly so you can see if it's being opened. Bonus points if you have them uploaded to your website so at least you get the traffic. Why not, right? So upload to website and then create a bit.ly link. Bonus here is you could update the letter on your site and the bit.ly link could remain the same. 

Check with your local city because some cities in California charge as much as $100 per day for bandit signs if you get caught and they track it back to you. Most bandit signs have a local number that's a message. I've heard from the city it's difficult to track these. Keep in mind they won't be fining from dead grass anymore because of the drought and since REOs are dying and they can no longer go after the banks, bandit signs seem like an easy target. I'd be very cautious. 

It's our back yard, based in Riverside over in the UCR area and where we invest and fund a lot of deals for investors. If you guys end up getting together, let me know. As far as clubs, we have a list of clubs on our website that we speak at frequently under free resources. 

From the hard money side, we're still seeing deals in the Inland Empire, High Desert, Palmdale/Lancaster, and the Bakersfield area. Most deals are not coming from buyers marketing directly to people with equity, good old fashioned door knocking, and inside relationships for those REOs an short sales that just can't get through the finish line. We see refinancing from Orange County, Los Angeles, and San Diego for investors that bought from 2009-2012. Harder to cash flow along the cost. 

@Miles Smith, if you're open to renting out some rooms, there are some great single family homes downtown that are newer. I had a friend in his mid 20s buy there a few years back and he's rented two rooms our the entire time effectively making his mortgage payment obsolete. 

If it were me at your age, I would look for something decent that I'd be interested in holding long term. However, not too expensive that I'm a slave to mortgage payments. I live downtown and love it. There are some wonderful things happening downtown. 

You probably know better than anyone what students want and Riverside alone has 50,000 of them! I would suggest easy parking, included utilities, and extra credit for a maid once a month to clean because that way you can attract maybe graduate students that aren't so interested in keggers. :)

Just an FYI, there are some restriction in Riverside on the number unrelated residents per household. Some UCR students were stuffing too many people into small houses and throwing parties that upset the neighbors. I'm not sure if they've updated that. If you're looking in an HOA area, that's something you'll also have to look at. In my neighborhood, our HOA is seriously about to crack down on the parking because absentee landlords and allowing students to share rooms.

If you can swing a fourplex, downtown has some beautiful ones, I just get scared of the repair bills because not all have been well taken care of and they are really old. Magnolia might be good since it's within close range to CBU and RCC.  

I am here because of "Riverside." Totally psyched me out! 

@Jon S., we buy in the Inland Empire at trustee sale. Tight margins.  However, on our hard money side, there are still deals. Definitely slower than 2013 but still happening. However, the methods of attaining those deals have changed drastically. More equity sellers and less focus on distressed sales via short sales and REOs. That also means a very different method of marketing for those deals.