All Forum Posts by: Rick Santasiere

Thanks for the share Bill! You've surely been busy. Hopefully we can hook up one of these days. Nice work on your scale my friend.

Welcome to BP !

@Brian Pulaski, this is awesome! In no way was my post a knock on anyone, including you. It was just a reminder that we need to focus on the things WE ARE GOOD at, and leave the rest to the pro's. Can I tell you how many times in my last flip where I got the wrong faucet, paint, mortar, tile, (the list goes on...) Point I am making:  My contractor is BETTER THAN ME at contracting and picking the right products for him to use. I should just stick to finding deals and selling houses :-) 

I am going to offer a slightly different viewpoint, and it might not be very popular. Any flipper will build so much long term wealth having a good relationship with a realtor than without one.  Can you sell a house on your own? You bet! However, you will never get the value from yourself and your time (and lack of experience and knowledge) than you can with a great local resource who lives, eats, and breathes real estate sales and stats. Listen to all the great flippers on the podcasts. What do they say about using agents? Interesting, the successful ones know exactly how to work with realtors to maximize their return. If you are thinking about quick profits, but not long term strategy and scaleability, then do it on your own. But if you want to get better at the things YOU DO WELL, and maximize profits, then allow someone better than you at selling real estate to take that on for you. If you don't, you will be leaving a lot of $ on the table (sadly, you will THINK you were saving money..) One last thought. Your next deal might just come from that same realtor that you worked so hard to align yourself with... What if that agent brought you your next $50k profit flip. Was he/she worth the few thousand bucks?  I try not to add my opinions too strongly to these threads when they come up, but a lot of the opinions here have made me feel that a different viewpoint is warranted.  Sellers who sell without agents get 8% LESS than sellers who use a full service agent.  Look it up if you need to, or just keep thinking you are "saving" money :-) You decide... My $.02

I don't think you are forcing someone to use a service. If a tenant is interested in renting a place, and the landlord isn't interested in profiting from the app fees, then the third party vendors make a ton of sense. I am not an attorney, but I think you would be pretty hard pressed to get into legal trouble for "directing" a tenant to a place where they can get screened. If you aren't having a ridiculous number of applicants apply, it shouldn't matter. "Pre-screening"'is imperative, which should knock out some candidates.

@Alex Dem I am a licensed Real Estate Broker in CT and MA. I own and operate a small agency with two small offices in CT, and hoping to expand into Boston area by 2018. We have nice mix of transactions in our business: Probably 50% Investment and another 50% standard residential working with buyers and sellers. Most of our agents are investors themselves, so the mindset certainly helps! Let me know if you ever need any help!!

Mike Abramowitz purchasing properties with tenants in place always has its challenges. If your goal is to stabilize and you know you are in for some trouble, you should build in that cost before buying. Have you tried "cash for keys?" Have you spoken with a decent eviction attorney? Sometimes they will have strategies and options that may not be found "in writing" anywhere. My $.02

Alexander Demchuk what does your agent who is submitting the offer think? Sounds great, I am just curious to see if you might be offering too little (or too much) based on area, comps, etc. I assume your agent spent the time to go over all these stats with you?

@Dejahn Renrick, YOU SHOWOFF :-) That's awesome.  There are a few great ideas in this thread. Another idea for some write off $$ is to buy some things to further your business... It may sound silly, but think about some of the big ticket items that you might need over the next 12 months or so: Truck (if you are picking up materials, etc..) advertising (if you are doing direct mail), employing someone (to find more deals, or work on the next deal).  Just a different thought, and if you don't "need" the $$ in your pocket, scaling, is always a great idea... If I were in your shoes, and I had a deal that large, I would probably spend (reinvest) at least 75% of it into the business, and then worry about paying the taxes down the road.. My $.02

@Craig Moore and @Steve Bracero. I would welcome some discussion from the "little" brokerage side of things. There are Pro's and Con's to everything, and this one is tough. If you are a self-taught kind of guy that has the confidence to find answers on your own, with a decent broker for support, then stay small. If you are looking for someone to teach you everything until you get the experience, then join the Big Box Shops. They offer better training and support (they usually have managers that are considered "non-compete" with the agents). I have agents that work under my brokerage, all with varying degrees of experience. There are times where I have turned agents away from my brokerage to go after the support first. Some of these agents, I like, and I just let them know to call me in a year if they want to discuss growth. The one really great thing to staying with a small shop is that there is less "red tape" in what you can and can't do. As a small broker, I can offer services and options that the "big boys" wouldn't dream of, and this is exactly why I do what I do. One last thing: Be careful about some of the Big Box shops and their real experience with being "investor friendly." Most of them have no training at all for that, and everything I ever learned about REI (ad working with clients) was from my own experiences in REI. I also would't be too concerned with with the top agents make. Worry about how YOU can become a tope agent. You will only "make," what you GIVE back to the consumer, which equates to working tirelessly for your clients. My $.02