All Forum Posts by: Roger Rustad

Anyone else use SugarCRM for their practice?

I'm looking at various CRM products now, and while I am partial to open source, I'm not sure how practical it sometimes is as compared to other for pay products.

Anyone have any opinions about SugarCRM?

Good point...I researched it afterwards and found people saying the same thing.  Yeah, that could be pretty serious.

In any event, I think solar is the way to go on these properties.

And for what it's worth, here is a great URL for those wanting to know more how to use a telephone wiring to power a cell phone 

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Get-Emergen...

Some friends would like to set up cameras for properties after they turn off the electricity to the property, and I'm looking into some ultra cheap solutions to do that. (Fortunately, these all have cell coverage.)

Couple of ideas I had...

• Solar solution to power on / off the various cameras.  Upon movement, just upload the camera pictures (using something like IFTTT).  Solutions like Homeboy work well with very little power.
• Another idea is to maybe leverage the telephone wires (since it's always on) for power.  This one requires a bit more thought and planning.

@Chris M , this is awesome.  Thx for sharing.

Another one I use is Mint.com.

Not perfect, but it helps me cherry pick various receipts that I quickly got on the wrong credit card.

Sorry, @Joe Homs and @Jay Hinrichs .  

My bad...they are "upside down" in the sense in drowning in payments.  They want to try to work this out, as their houses have higher value than what they paid.  Chances are that they will not pull out of this, hence the opportunity for a hard money lender.

(Bad word choice on my part. I'm a tech guy, not a real estate guy.)

Connor, this is where Wordpress ROCKS! If you want Google Forms on steroids, check out Formidable Forms as a Wordpress plugin. If you have any questions on how to do this for free, let me know. Others will try to charge you for this but you should be ok doing it yourself. Private message me if you have any questions.

I would recommend a blend -- get a 9-5 W2 job that gets you in "the game" (I.e. Learn on their time!), then use those connections to build your own contact base and niche. An elderly family friend just made the transition to investor. She did property management and then decided to get her real estate license to capitalize on the fact that she knew the estate owners directly. They were her first sale. She then took that money and bought smaller properties. She is doing quite well, and she started this not too long ago. Where do you want to do this? Up there in Alaska?

As a first time duplex looker, I see lots of duplexes in rent control areas for sale (eg in Oakland). I did the math on what current residents in the area pay and see little to no way to get a return on these investments. Am I missing something? Or are there other ways to make it via renter income?