All Forum Posts by: Ryan Whitcher

@Hai Ly Welcome! You've come to the best site for real estate knowledge in my opinion. Everything you want via their podcasts, forums, blogs, calculators, etc. 

I recommend listening the podcasts whenever you can! Driving, cooking, working out, etc - gotta get on that 1.5x speed life! Lol. 

I'm sure you'll kill it in the buy & hold game. Good luck!

@Joseph R Fornwalt Welcome to BP!

Would highly encourage you to watch this video by @Brandon Turner (and maybe a few more like it) to familiarize yourself with what numbers go into the analysis. Much easier to see it in video form in my opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrOR9mYk0Vs&t=1111...

As for the assessed value - that is hit or miss in most markets I've experienced. I've made deals where I got it above tax value and had leads that were well below assessed value that we couldn't make work. Instead, use recently sold properties in the area to determine what it's worth is (briefly explained below)

You can find your market rent rates by going through your Realtor - or using sites like Zillow, Trulia, CL to see what similar properties are renting for. 

For ARV of a property: once again your Realtor can help greatly with this - but you can get a good idea yourself by:

Go recently sold on Realtor.com

Sold within 3-6 months

Put in Sq ft parameters(+- around 300 sq ft from subject property)

Filter by similiar bed/bath

Filter by acreage if necessary 

Start by going out .25 mile radius, increase as necessary up to 1 mile unless you are in very rural area

Check the pictures of recently sold to compare conditions of properties (distressed vs rehabbed/updated)

Try to find at least 3 good comparables and take a good average of them accordingly. 

@Kenny Yung

Hey Kenny, I would go on FB and search "(City) Real Estate Investors" and those groups/pages will generally have recommendations of this. If not, just google title companies in the area and start calling!

Not 100% sure on what you're asking here but - If there's snow on the ground, I would assume the house with untouched snow would be the one's you want to look for! Assuming they also fit the distressed category. 

@Nicholas Groover Congrats on taking the first step! Google " _____ County GIS" and through that website you will be able to find the Owner and Mailing address and a lot of information about the property. You can either write up a quick, personal letter to them stating your interest in their house or just use a phone skip tracing company like WhitePages or BeenVerified. I've found these usually have about a 30-40% success rate at best. 

On another note, I would make your goal to find 100 solid leads from driving, 3-4 isn't much at all and I wouldn't expect a deal from it, ALTHOUGH I hope you get one!

@Kobe Gyau I just set one up today, took 25 mins. I YouTubed "How to set up an LLC in NC" so I would just do that for the same thing in NY. Just filled out 2 documents, and mailed it off with a check - I didn't have to specify what industry I was even in, just making sure I didn't have a name that was already taken.

Hope that helps!

@Ray Lai RESimpli was great, I used them for my direct mail when I did it.

@Mitchell Pollard - I agree with @Ehsan Rishat & @Kelvin Tam 100%

I always say I'd rather have 100 solid leads I found driving around than to have 1000 paid leads! 

But going off what was previously said, it depends on your market and how competitive it is, etc!

Good luck!!

Hi @Erica J.

Google Voice is great

Website isn't necessary when starting out - internet marketing is quite expensive and usually takes a lot of time to get the ball rolling on this. If you can find a cheap one, it could be worth it just to have another form of credibility but I would not focus primarily on a website first

Local phone number over 1800

LLC is not really necessary when you are starting out either - use that ~$150 instead for gas, business cards, marketing, etc. Once you do a deal or few, then start to think about an LLC. (This is not legal advice - Consult your attorney for legal advice :) )

@Bricarra S.

Totally agree with @Michael S. & @Allan Bishop Jr. - all the information you could ever need is in BP alone! Figure out which area works best for you - Buy/Hold, Flipping, Wholesaling, Note Investing...whatever, and go all in on an information binge on that topic. 

Go to https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/521-events-an... to find local meetups to start networking with people in your area. Agree with the above mention of beefing up your profile a little, and also start to introduce new people via New Member Introductions in the forums to get your activity up!

Just my 2 cents!