All Forum Posts by: Stephen Bjorgan

Looking at the posting date, not sure if this post has gone dark but thought I'd take a shot. A lot has happened in a year, after all. 

I live in CA. I recently rehab'd two SFR's and added casitas/adu's on both. Paid out of pocket for the construction costs. A big surprise came when I went to refi both properties. The bank, progressive animals that they are, wouldn't recognize the additional SF of the ADU's because they weren't physically connected to the main house. And they wouldn't justify the ADU's as income-generating because the ADU's didn't yet have rental contracts in place. Yikes! There was zero value-add for all of my expense.

Don't do this!

My take-away was that my next purchase should be a house hack that takes a larger SFR and partitions that into a main residence plus an ADU, maybe by adding a little SF along the way. The idea being, I can get around the RH1 zoning restriction that prohibits duplexes in most NIMBY cities in CA, leverage the superseding ADU laws on the state level, and respect banks' archaic underwriting criteria that only recognize home improvements plus any SF that can be added to the main structure.

Complicated. Not very elegant. But, hey, who said real estate wasn't messy?

Next up? How to master rezoning a parcel with an ADU so that it can be subdivided and sold as two separate units. But one thing at a time... This is definitely new territory for all concerned: investors, housing advocates, cities, states. Good luck out there!

Was thinking I needed to be extra sensitive given the end of life issue. But as you inferred, it’s just another reason to sell as is divorce, etc. Thanks!

I've located quite a few SFR and a few MF properties where the owners have recently passed. I also have a handful of ‘opportunities' where I understand the owners are terminally ill.

I have no problem identifying the owners, their heirs, or what to offer as possible benefits of a sale. I’m a good listener.

However, I feel emotionally challenged cold calling heirs of the recently deceased or those who might be using their homes as a hospice.

Any tips? I understand quite a few agents use lists of deceased owners as part of their prospecting model. What I can’t quite grasp are appropriate opening statements (Interest Generators) while remaining sensitive to the situation.

Thanks for your tips/brainstorms!

Given your goal about working with investors, I'd say: 1) Own something yourself; you need investors to see you as a peer; 2) Allow yourself to be mentored; learn from others' years of mistakes!; 3) Find something of value to offer investors (rent surveys, list of recent solds, marketing packages for recent solds resembling your prospects' own properties, etc) And how much you can sell depends on: 1) the number of homes (assuming you're doing SFR) there are in your area (volume); 2) how many homes turn in a give year (velocity); 3) how much closed income on average is possible given (2) above; 4) how much income you expect in a given year; 5) how many contacts you need to make per sale to capture the income projected in (4) above. KW training can help you with the math re 3,4,5, or you can calculate it yourself through your own research. Best of luck!

Adam, 

This suggestion may be really out of the box for many of the readers here but I'm rather certain that Virginia has an aggressive solar program at the moment. Have you ever thought of using the parcel as "resource land." Dominion Energy claims to be looking for parcels to lease for 20-25 year terms so that they can build and operate solar power plants. I don't know the specifics but here's a reference: 

http://www.calseia.org/industry-news?doc=201409150...

Alternative to a lease, you might want to see if Dominion might also buy the power from a solar plant which you have built on the site. The power plant which you build could be located on the ground or on the rooftop of a larger structure (e.g., warehouse) on the property, thereby increasing asset value tremendously because you then have income not only from the ground space but also from the rooftop.

I've done this in California profitably for others and am now doing my first full development on my own. The numbers work out really well here and they may for you as well.

This question may be a bit down in the weeds but has anyone experience with a usable, next generation MLS or Loopnet/CoStar successor? I liken the post, search, and viewing capabilities of the current state of the art to something out of the 1960's. I would like to prototype an improved service that's community-driven and easy to use across the various user constituencies. I'm looking for feedback and inspiration. What better audience to provide this than the BiggerPockets community?