All Forum Posts by: Ryan Harthan

@Seth Teel 15k houses on the West side lol

In San Antonio I look at properties with cap rates from 10% in good neighborhoods to 50% in terrible ones.  If you want the higher returns you need to look in the less competitive areas.  It comes down to something I learned in college, efficient market hypothesis.  You're going to get better returns in areas less desirable to other investors.

I find it's about having a very good system of keeping notes and time tables. When to bid, when to check again to see if something's fallen out of contract, when to resubmit, how long your inspection period lasts. Keeping a good spreadsheet and a good calendar is the key to staying on top of REO's and HUDs

I buy them occasionally when they do trustee sales but they're few and far between.  To their credit, Auction.com is GREAT at marketing and getting all sorts of new buyers out of the woods to bid on their properties.  This usually means that they're getting bid up until they don't make sense anymore.  Also - I've seen a dozen or so investors buy properties on them with SIZABLE federal tax liens, something I'm pretty careful at looking into before I bid on a house.  The disadvantage of being great at marketing is pretty tough competition for deals.

Kind of unrelated to the topic but as a recent college grad in Texas they have a great set up for leasing to students.  Individually leasing each room out can bring twice the rental rates as a whole lease for the entire property.  May want to talk to your attorney about the legality of that in Pennsylvania.  Where as we paid $1100/mo for a four bedroom two bath apartment but almost $2,400/mo when leased individually.

A big issue with non-disclosure states is that Zillow can't actually pull the final sales price of a listing.  So it's beyond me how they come up with values but they tend to be pretty inaccurate on anything built much before like 2008

I'm networked pretty deep with a couple thousand realtors in San Antonio.  I might get on once a week and throw something out like, "Hey, I'm looking to buy some beat up houses cash.  I'll pay both sides commission for any off market leads that work out."  Depends on the day and the time but I'll get anywhere from 10-15 replies every time I do it.  I also have people reach out to me for inventory constantly as our market has dried up pretty bad.

Found this article handy

http://www.zillow.com/zestimate/#acc

You two can obviously both make decisions but the managing partner generally handles the day to day operations: collecting rent, evictions, tenants, repairs, etc.  You probably both want to look at deals when you're acquiring them at least in the beginning but in a long lasting relationship generally the managing partner will take over most or all of the business transactions.

You can have one partner be an equity partner and the other a managing partner.  Also, I would recommend a 49/51% split.  In the event that you can't agree on an issue one person can override the other and prevents a stale mate on important issues.  One person is the investor bringing the capital for the transaction(s) and the other bringing the business knowledge to set the deal up and manage it.  Profits being split between the two.