All Forum Posts by: Greg V.

I promised a Disney cruise (or other vacation of her choice) every year, starting 10 years from now. A tangible thing versus "financially independent" seemed to work for me.

We had out of state properties in 5 different states at one point but decided to sell most of them and invest heavily in another. There ended up being three things that we needed for out of state investing. The first was having really good friends or family that we could fall back on. No matter how good a property manager you get initially, they may move on which is what happened in our case. Now you're stuck looking for someone possibly without in person interviews, etc. This takes time and having a family member or friend fill the void until you find one is really helpful. Second, we found that you have to at least physically visit the property at least once per year so it's helpful to have a good reason to visit like seeing family, friends, maybe a vacation. You shouldn't dread visiting your properties because you don't really care to see that area. No one takes care of it like you and we found that property managers are great at collecting rents, getting the little things fixed but not identifying the capital improvement items. Those you need to see for yourself. Lastly, for us, I needed to have an interest in an area where I would find myself looking on the MLS every day and sending out mailers. These are just our observations and others may have different experiences.

Are you planning to visit either of those cities at least once per year? Do you have a reason to visit there often (family, vacation area you like, etc)? From my own personal experience, it's hard to have out of state properties and not visit them at least once a year to make sure repairs are getting done and property management is doing its job. For us, it just became too difficult to break away and see those properties so we decided to invest where family was and we would visit there every year anyway.

When was the last time your "financial planner" talked to you about the advantages of buying a home or a rental property. They are mutual fund salesman not financial planners. Plus anyone that buys stock based on "technical analysis" is a gambler not an investor. People in Vegas try to see patterns at roulette. Same thing. And by the way, why is Real Estate under the "Personal Finance" section of yahoo finance instead of under investments. At least have them under both and target different people and articles in each section.

What type of commercial RE did you want to get into? Multifamily, office, retail, warehouse?

It's not so necessary now but I still like to use it for newer businesses. I can pull them in because it softens those first few months when they are just starting out. I then increase the base rent to cover. I also don't sign leases for less than 3 years but almost always they are 5-10 years. This is for 1000 sq ft up to 5000 sq ft tenant.

I wrap free rent into the entire package of lease rate, buildout paid by me, etc based on the business so it depends but generally though, in the depths of the recession, I was at 5-6 months free rent. It was rough. I'm filling spaces now and am starting out with no free rent but may go up to 3 months. The market has definitely turned.

Sorry what I meant was that I would like to bring certain "categories" to the top of the category list. That would help a bit. Thanks.

Maybe this isn't the right place to talk about the app. I love it. I wasn't able to follow the posts on the website because of time constraints but the app makes it much easier. Feedback is the key to software improvement so please take the issues I'm about to explain as constructive, I really do love the app. I'm running it on the current iOS on an iPhone 5s which you may need to track down some of the issues. Here are some of the issues I've seen. The app tends to crash and close fairly frequently. I would say about 20% of the time. It's not a huge deal because it opens right back up. It happens sometimes when I click on a certain thread and sometimes when I click on "Post". Also when I go to post something the previous text that I wrote from that same thread comes up so I have to delete all of that before posting something new. I would also like a way to bring the forum that I want to the top. I really only want to look at the commercial RE but have to scroll down the list of forums to get to it. Thanks again for developing it. It's awesome!

I think that's the way to go too. I use the same technique of buying half to fully vacant commercial spaces, lease out and refi. One big difference is the amount of cash you need. The tenant buildouts can be expensive (if the terms call for you to pay for it), and you have to assume at least a year of vacancy. It takes a while to get someone that is free of a multi year lease to be able to move or a new business to get funding. I invest in downtown storefronts and somewhat larger office/retail spaces. The closing for those are almost the same as a single family home except that the inspections can be over $2k and the appraisals over $2k. Financing terms are somewhat different but not anything you probably haven't heard about (no more than 20 year am, 5 year fixed). Others on this forum can talk about the other strategies with national restaurants and big box stores. I'm still learning about those.