All Forum Posts by: Roger Lin

Dan, Thanks for the kind words. 

Sean and everyone else: feel free to reach out to me and I can add you to the distribution list. We are not the biggest group around and we are not a marketing organization. What we do is provide a place where investors of all levels and learn and connect from each other. If you are interested, reach out to me and join the fun.

Happy investing.

Roger

Andrea, thank you for reaching out. Please send me an email at [email protected] and I can add you to the list.

@Maxwell Lee: Sorry took me a few days. We were camping for a few days. Feel free to reach out to me by phone or email. Be happy to share my experience with you! Say hi to Kelly for me.

I started out in residential investments and was in the same place a few years back. I would advice you to get involved in organizations like NAIOP (there are regional chapters near you), ULI. You will need to get educated too in commercial real estate because it is vert different from residential. You might want to look at local universities and find MRED/MSRED (Masters in Real Estate Development) programs. If you don't want to commit yourself to a graduate degree program, these places will likely hold seminars and other short-term programs. 

@Kevin Hunter, Thanks for the endorsement!

@Kelly Elizabeth, I am happy to put you on a distribution list and our FB site where a lot of informative real estate discourse takes place. No worries about the lack of experience, there are plenty of people who are willing to share their hard-earned experience and knowledge.

I'll PM you in a minute.

Happy investing!

Thanks I read that too already! I think we are doing similar things and I have much to learn from you. Thank you for sharing your experience.

Thanks Joe! I know you posted this more than 10 months ago but it suddenly became very relevant advice now that I am building up my own syndication business. I love your strategy to get money before you have a deal. It makes perfect sense and I agree with you that the natural progression is to raise a fund. I am starting to do that before my third deal firms up. Thanks for sharing. 

@John Casmon Thanks! I can attribute the opportunity to building relationships, helping people out on things and showing up. Basically, I decided to go into commercial real estate about 5 years ago and I've literally spent the last 4 years meeting people who are in commercial real estate and building meaningful relationships with them. I am genuinely interested in learning and I humbly seek knowledge and experience in higher levels of the real estate world. I try to help people out with my resources and experiences whenever I can. I would say after you do this for a while, people start to see you as someone they want to work with. My role in the deal is one of three equity investors. I love being in this position. If you are working with people you can trust, this strategy allows you to get into deals much larger than you can normally handle on your own. It's been excellent so far.

@Lane Kawaoka I was on the debt side on small deals but have moved to the equity side on larger deals. Typically, I try to also bake some controls into the deal, which puts me also on the PM side too.

Thanks all. 

@Marie G. Here are a few I can name:

1. Financing: You really only have the choices of bank loan, hard money and some sort of private money. This is the same in CRE but there are more flexibility within each of these categories.

2. Leverage/Scale: In the DMV area, you cannot really purchase anything for less than about $300,000. In CRE, you can be an equity investor in a multi-million dollar deal with $300,000. Sure, you can syndicate in SFHs too, but the cash flow just does not justify all the work.

3. Management Efficiency: This has to do with scale too, with a 98 unit apt, you can and have to have a property manager, SFHs are just management headaches.

4. Vacancy: with SFH it is always either 100% or 0%. CRE, you have a much larger range and you can actually increase the value of the property by improving the vacancy while collecting on the occupied.

I hope that helps.