All Forum Posts by: Ryan Spearman

I live in New Zealand in a city with very expensive housing, so I have started to invest out of town in a cheaper city.

I have a couple of doors and want to acquire more but am finding it very hard to find deals.

I have been talking to a buyers agent in the city I'm looking in, and it seems like it could be a real good way of being able to thoroughly look into a market that I don't know as well as my own. They seem to have plenty of connections to both on and off market deals.

Is this just another name for a turnkey? Everyone talks about having a great agent on your team, especially when buying long distance, but do they mean buyers agent? Ie, the buyer paying the agent?

They charge approximately 4.5% per purchase, which isn't huge, but isn't insignificant. Then again, if they find deals that I couldn't and they are more than 4.5% cheaper, then it must be worth it right?

What is the general consensus here?

After posting my earlier post and studying the quotes a bit, I actually am tending to agree with you- he really is offering to do a lot.

I have used him before on some minor work and it was really well done. He's just one of these handymen that can be a bit hard to get hold of, so I'm never quite sure where I stand.

The only testimonials I have for the bigger outfit are from their website, which are of course glowing.

I recently bought a small 2 bedroom unit that was already tenanted. It is in need of quite a bit of cosmetic work inside, but I don't want to do the work around the tenant, and I don't want to lose him, he is very good.

Fortunately, he is going away for 3 weeks so I can complete the work while he's away. I have got quotes from 2 different companies, they are wildly different in price, but I am still considering going with the more expensive one, simply because it seems like they are more professional and I worry that they will do a much better job than the cheap guy.

What do you normally do in this situation? 

The cheaper guy is a general handyman and has included lots of other work in his quote; re-siliconing the shower, repairing a couple of doors, repairing some doors, reputtying windows plus all the painting. 

The expensive outfit is just a redecorator. They will simply do all the painting/wallpapering.

The price difference is 6657 vs 4163.

Any recommendations?

Ryan

If I was just buying to hold for cash flow and income and the numbers work, it works though right?

How do you stay on top of markets from so far away?

I’d love to get some more Auckland property but I need the cash flow I can get from rotorua before I can afford any of the big prices in Auckland without taking on massive amounts of personal debt 

Hi all. Just thought I should write and introduce myself as I'm new to biggerpockets and I have a tonne of questions about all sorts of things, so I figured I'd get my story out of the way first.

I have owned rental properties for about 14 years, but until now I'd consider myself a "hobbyist" investor. I've kind of just floated along hoping for the best, now I can see what can actually be done I really want to build up a buy and hold business based on single family homes and transition out of my job in the film industry to financial independence.

Fortunately I have actually been very lucky with my investing and sold my last rental a year ago during a very inflated period in the local market and fully paid off all my mortgages, including the family home giving me capital somewhere in the region of 1.1-1.2 million, now I just need to get that capital to start making me some cash flow so I can reduce my hours spent on the film set and increase my time hanging out with my young family.

Since my local market (Auckland, New Zealand) is still extremely expensive and rents relatively low (nothing I have ever owned in Auckland has ever come close to positive cashflow, I just thought I was buying for future gains), I started looking in a city 3 hours drive from Auckland called Rotorua, and discovered it has much better prices.

I have bought 2x 2 bedroom properties this year. We call these sort of properties 'units', I think they are akin to what would be called condos in the States, although almost always single level, and generally never more than 9 or so joined together. They are generally all owned separately. 

The first is the cheaper of the 2 purchased at 145,000, the second for 243,000. The cheaper one is on a 15 year mortgage the 2nd is currently interest only. I'm hoping to pay the first one off as soon as possible using income from my job in the film industry and then start concentrating on the next.

In the meantime however I want to concentrate on finding plenty more deals like these that have positive cashflow that I can pour back into the original mortgage and get it out of the way as soon as possible, all the while increasing the rent over the years.

Finding finance at this stage has been very easy as I have no mortgage on my own house, I simply take 20% of the purchase price out of my own overdraft for the down payment, then borrow the full purchase amount in order to pay back the overdraft.

Despite wanting to go large, I think I'll try and use these two properties to iron out my full landlording systems so when I do have multiple properties it doesn't turn into a disaster.

Anyway, plenty of questions over the coming times- acquisition, management, financing. All advice and suggestions would be muchly appreciated

Ryan