All Forum Posts by: Peter Sanchez

I think the best advice is to be patient and not get discouraged. It takes time to build up a clientele.  My brother owns a real estate brokerage in Florida with several offices and many new agents give up and quit because they feel like they can't get clients. Other agents who aren't any better just keep at it and get a few clients, then a few more and eventually do really well.  

If you are using it to invest yourself, that's great.  Most agents just target their family/friends who are looking to buy a home. If you deal with investors, then each client won't be giving you one commission every 5 or 6 years like a homebuyer, they'll give you several commission's per year. 

Well, you said the a similar one sold for $75k, right?  If this one is $60k but needs a lot of work, wouldn't it make sense to buy one that doesn't need repairs for $75k?  

I think the only thing that makes this look okay is that the owner is willing to carry a note for a while at a good interest rate. 

Also, you mention it's a rough neighborhood. If you put thousands into the property to fix it up, will you be able to charge higher rent? Maybe the seller hasn't bothered fixing it because he thinks he can't raise the rent so instead of keeping up his triplex he is just milking it dry and trying to sell what's left.  

Unless you're already rich, you only have so much ammo to go hunting with.  Save your bullets for the elephant! 

It's 3 things.  How much money you invest, what rate it's compounding at and how long it's growing.  Remember that island called Manhattan that the Indians sold to Peter Minuit for $27? If the Indians had compounded it at 7% it would be worth several trillion dollars by now.  Low amount invested, low return, but long runway = success.  If you don't have a couple of hundred years, then focus on getting a better return or getting your hands on more money to invest (maybe by working more or saving more). 

I think if you avoid big mistakes (don't carry credit card debt, don't lease a new car etc.) you are halfway there.  Once you learn to avoid mistakes that reverse your compounding machine, you just need a few consistent wins to grow your pot consistently.  You don't need a lot of good ideas to get rich.  Just patience, hard work and a little luck.  

I don't have to make a lot of moves.  As Charlie Munger says, "you don't make money buying and selling, you make money sitting and waiting."  

It's tricky being an out of state landlord. And although buying for yourself in DC is okay, I wouldn't want to be a landlord here. You'll be an amateur landlord dealing with professional tenants where the rules are in their favor. MD or VA are better for landlords though.

Once you're sure you'll stay here (or move) decide what you want to do.  

Never Split the Difference is a fantastic book on negotiating.

Every superhero has an origin story, so thanks for sharing.  Since I believe you can learn more from your mistakes than your successes, where do you think it started to go wrong?  Was it paying too much for the first house?  Scaling up before you knew what you were doing?  Or buying expensive things b/c you felt like you made it? 

Sometimes dividend cuts are fine. A REIT I own (SRG) did a dividend cut to preserve cash to fund very profitable projects. Because it was cutting for a good reason (vs we're cutting the dividend because business is down) the stock price hardly budged.

And the high dividend can be a double edged sword. Look at WPG, which is yielding almost 18%. But it's a REIT that owns malls in 2 tier cities like Columbus Ohio and Peoria Illinois. The CEO is a sharp guy and owns a lot of stock that he purchased with his own money, but he's in a tough industry and the reason that the yield is so high on a lot of these is that they are ugly and have some hair on them. You have to look past that and try to see the inner beauty.

 "CPA, CVA, FCPA, CFF, MAFF" These are all CPA designations, so no right to be called Dr.

CMAP  This is also not a DR

J.D.  means he's a lawyer (well, that he has a law degree, not that he's practicing).  Technically the degree is "Juris Doctor" but in 20 years since I graduated law school, out of the thousands of lawyers I have interacted with, I have only ever met one person who is a JD and called himself "Dr." 

And...I won't name and shame his law school, but when I googled it, this came up: 

“[redacted] School of Law is on the list of ABA-approved law schools, and it remains subject to published notices that it is operating out of compliance on specific standards,” he said. “The school has been directed to take specific remedial action to demonstrate that it has come back into compliance with those standards. The school’s accreditation remains in place while the review processes are continuing.”

In other words, if they don't clean up their act, the place where he got his law degree could lose it's accreditation.  

Are you the same @Anthony Galante I went to high school with?  If so, small world bro!  

Yes, this is how Madoff got away with his ponzi scheme so long too. It was a steady 10-12% a year, which is not eye-popping.  But if you know some basic math and finance then it starts not to make sense.  Even Buffett had some bad years, but Madoff never did.  Is that skill or something fishy? 

If this guy from Oceanpointe had several criminal convictions, does anyone believe that Morris risked his money and reputation on this guy without looking at his background? Does anyone believe that the reason he hated Bigger Pockets is because it was giving investors bad information?  Maybe he hated on it because it was a place where investors could compare notes.  

I also literally laughed out loud at the section of his apology where he said not to believe the media because people in the media were shady and make up lies--this from a guy who was on Fox News (the media!) and is being accused by investors of being shady and telling lies.  Pot meet kettle?