All Forum Posts by: Greg V.

I go through a local commercial broker. In a small town, you can look at which person has the most commercial lease/sale listings by either driving around or looking on Loopnet. They should be able to get you previous sales and current lease rates. Be careful by just looking at current lease or sale listings on Loopnet. Commercial is very specific to the property plus many owners list properties at ridiculous amounts and will probably never get them. I find those happen more on the commercial side than the residential. Maybe someone else has a better source but I've found that the information isn't as easy as residential where some of that info is on zillow or move.com for rents.

Even if it makes (or saves) you some money, there's an opportunity cost with your time and any inventory costs. If it were me and you are looking to continue buying real estate then I wouldn't operate it. Your time will be sucked into less profitable work. If your buying new property days are over and you think you have extra time and want to try this out, then maybe. Penny wise, pound foolish

Sounds great. Keep us posted on the development. I'd like to hear of any unexpected issues that come up to help in our planning. Thanks!

We're looking for state and federal incentives to bridge the gap. At this point, we're going to be patient and not purchase it without them. It may be another year until we can get those lines up.

Michael Talerico I just finished putting together the numbers for the bank. We've been talking about this project for about two years so we both wanted to see if/how it was going to work. After submitting them, I called him about a day later. We talked a little and then I told him it wasn't a good deal. Based on current market caps and rental rates, we'd be putting in $2M (including acquisition) into a property that would be worth $2M. That's for the most likely rehab cost. There's a chance of a cost over run of up to $200k once we open up the walls.

But I would just emphasize what other people said above about retail/office. It's much more important to know all the costs because they can quickly add up a lot higher then you think. We put down a lot of money to get quality tenants and don't expect to make that back for a couple years. Patience, focusing on the long term, and having a good paying day job are all key for us.

I would echo everything above. Also think about your personality. I got out of multifamily because residential tenants drive me nuts and I couldn't see myself being in the game for the long term. Even when working with small business tenants, they understand business expenses and you can reason with them.

I will also add that once you figure out which area of real estate fits your personality traits, then decide upon the location to become an expert. These two also may be flipped if you already had an area in mind that may not be good for certain investments. Just remember, if you don't truly enjoy what you're doing, you won't continue it long enough to become an expert in your niche which is when you start making good money.

Dooreuhn Cee I'm looking for the same thing and was going to go down the Quicken route for property expense tracking for an easier tax time, trend tracking, and possible deal analysis although I can continue to do this in excel. I would be importing some of this info from an online bank account and some would be input manually. What specifically does Quicken not do? What's the cost of SmartSheet?

I'm actually working through a similar project right now. We've just submitted the numbers to the bank and will be discussing everything shortly. We received 2 cost estimates for the rehab along with an initial code analysis to look at the possible elevator and fire suppression requirements. I'll post what comes out of the discussion.