All Forum Posts by: Scott Trench
Scott Trench has started 160 posts and replied 2596 times.
Post: Excited (and Nervous!) to Start Our Real Estate Investment Journey
- Rental Property Investor
- Denver, CO
- Posts 2,740
- Votes 6,167
Welcome to BiggerPockets, Rebecca!
@Tim Delaney is an investor in the Buffalo market and shares many of your views on its long term potential!
Best of luck, and if I lived nearby I think I’d be bullish on, and potentially investing in the area as well!
Post: BiggerPockets app change my iPhone and the BiggerPocket app ?
- Rental Property Investor
- Denver, CO
- Posts 2,740
- Votes 6,167
Quote from @Patrick Shep:
@Scott Trench Still no update?
We have an app now in beta that will soft launch by end of year! @Tiamo Wright is getting g this over the finish line.
Post: RAD Diversified Review — It Wasn't Pretty
- Rental Property Investor
- Denver, CO
- Posts 2,740
- Votes 6,167
@Rene Hosman - Could you please take care of this? I think that this is a reasonable request to remove a personal phone number from the forums. Let's just remove that phone number and leave everything else up, as per our usual policy.
Post: Is AN 800+ FICO CREDIT SCORE EVEN POSSIBLE?
- Rental Property Investor
- Denver, CO
- Posts 2,740
- Votes 6,167
I've got one. It takes about 10 years of never missing a payment, using light leverage relative to your income, and using a tiny fraction of your available credit card limits.
Post: New Policy Idea: BiggerPockets to Send Wholesalers a $125 Bill For Every Solicitation
- Rental Property Investor
- Denver, CO
- Posts 2,740
- Votes 6,167
We are considering a new policy at BiggerPockets and request feedback.
Idea:
Update our website policy such that "Wholesalers" who break forum rules, solicit members, or submit requests to meet agents using our agent finder will be sent a $125 bill for each infraction.
This will be baked into our website policy. Once billed, those in violation of the policy won't be able to rejoin BiggerPockets, including prohibition of the use of the agent/lender finder tools, forums, and private messaging system until their bill is paid.
Our goal with this policy is to accomplish several things:
- Encourage these "wholesalers" to bless some other real estate investing community with their presence
- Stop the SPAM
- Offset the several hundred thousand dollars per year in costs that spammers, too often "wholesalers" bring to the platform.
Obviously, legitimate wholesalers, who abide by our forum rules, use the messaging systems appropriately, and do not pretend to be investors when contacting professionals in our network, are welcome and encouraged to carry on.
Post: What are your thoughts about Prenuptial agreements?
- Rental Property Investor
- Denver, CO
- Posts 2,740
- Votes 6,167
Everyone has a prenuptial agreement.
The difference is, if you don't specifically lay things out, you implicitly agree that the prenuptial agreement is the laws of the state you currently live in (or the future one you live in at the time of divorce).
Everyone has an estate plan too, by the same logic.
My wife and I chose to write down our own rules for both our marital property and our estate, so that it doesn't go to whatever wacky CO law governs distribution of wealth.
Post: Post-Mint App Personal Finance Software Hunt
- Rental Property Investor
- Denver, CO
- Posts 2,740
- Votes 6,167
Howdy! I personally use Stessa (included free with your pro/business account) and Monarch. Stessa for the rentals, Monarch for the other accounts (IRAs, brokerage accounts, cash, etc.)
Post: Purchasing a small Office Building
- Rental Property Investor
- Denver, CO
- Posts 2,740
- Votes 6,167
Thanks guys!
As for speculation that this building would be leased by BiggerPockets - no that is not my intent, and I would feel it is a conflict of interest.
I think that the suggestions to test the market for demand with an option is a great one! I will ask my broker about this.
If I can line up a tenant during the option period, then I know I will win, and I can also win if another buyer comes in with a competitive offer.
Post: Syndicator Threatens LPs for Negative Comment about them On BP
- Rental Property Investor
- Denver, CO
- Posts 2,740
- Votes 6,167
Quote from @Cheryl A.:
Quote from @Scott Trench:
I don't know who needs to read this, but I feel it needs to be posted, publicly.
Recently the following happened:
- BP Member posts negative statement about syndicator to these forums, involving lost money, poor communication, etc.
- Syndicator is radio silent, apparently pretending not to notice dozens or hundreds of discussions about their business. Syndicator does not respond to thread.
- Syndicator intimidates investor (who just lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars investing with said syndicator) with legal threat
- Terrified LP, already having lost money, now is scared that wealthy syndicator could ruin them, and asks me to remove the forum post discussing the company
While I am in no position to verify the truth or falsity of claims made on these forums by LPs or GPs, to me, it seems like a special hell is emerging for investors where the following reality is possible:
- Invest tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars with a syndicator
- Lose all or most of this investment
- Get ghosted/poor communication from sponsor
- When they complain or ask for help, get threatened with legal action
I told the person with the original post the following:
- Name the syndicator, and I will publicly call them out for their threat, if they confirm who it is. I will invite the syndicator to confirm or deny the threat publicly. The member who messaged me has not confirmed who it was and named two people in their post. Otherwise, I'd be naming them right now.
- If the syndicator actually sues this member, we will make the litigation a headline issue in every major BiggerPockets content channel, including YouTube, Blog, Podcast, and these forums. We will cover the story in detail, with regular updates, through to resolution.
After all, Investors need to know which sponsors sue their own investors after allegedly losing their money and ghosting them.
- If the OP is lying, we will expose that and call out the syndicator's innocence, of course.
- If the OP is generally telling the truth, we will expose the syndicator's performance and behavior in threatening and suing their own investor as far and wide as we possibly can. We will evaluate their portfolio, estimating the purchase price and current value of every deal they've done from the beginning of time. We will research occupancy rates, and report on outcomes.
I am disgusted by the accusation, if true, made by this recent member, and while this is the most egregious situation to date, it's part of a disturbing pattern. The power dynamic between GP and LP is out of control. I have received multiple DMs from terrified members intimidated by wealthy sponsors, asking them to pull down their forum posts, even though they claim they posted truthful information.
We will rectify that power dynamic.
Maybe some GPs can intimidate their own LPs in private. But, not here on BiggerPockets. If you do that, we will come after you.
Syndicators - by all means, defend your reputation and set the record straight. If someone says something untrue about your business, respond and tell us what's really going on.
But, be warned, GPs - if you threaten your LPs for posting generally accurate negative stuff about you on BiggerPockets, we will make a public example of you for all to see.
Hi Scott, thanks for starting this thread. This happened to me recently. I invested two deals with Djuric Family Office (DFO) also know as Blake Capital Group. When the first deal failed I turned to BP to get answers to questions I had that were not being answered by DFO and share my experience with other LPs.
Within a few days I received an email DFO stating:
"I will be sending you a legal letter in the mail and email tomorrow regarding your false and misleading internet comments."
To date no letter has been received.
The second deal just failed with complete loss of all investments. I'll be updating my experience on BP, so who knows what will happen next.
Cheryl - I am facing a VERY interesting situation (not with Djuric family office / Blake Capital Group but with another sponsor).
Basically, it is clear that this sponsor lost all of their investor's money, and multiple investors claim that the sponsor lost their money, ghosted them, and behaved inappropriately.
But, none of them are willing to discuss the matter on the record. We put a journalist on a particular story, and no source is willing to discuss the situation publicly.
To me, THAT is the story. LPs who feel mistreated/robbed/lied to are too scared to say anything.
You are an extremely rare breed in being willing to discuss a sponsor in a negatively light publicly.
How do we change this dynamic? We want people to discuss sponsors like they'd discuss plumbers - the good, the bad, and the ugly, with 5 star ratings.
The only place we can get some semblance of this is on PassivePockets.com, where some sponsors are reviewed by LPs behind an LP-only wall.
Why do you think folks are so afraid to speak up?
Post: Purchasing a small Office Building
- Rental Property Investor
- Denver, CO
- Posts 2,740
- Votes 6,167
Hi Folks - I am fishing for more advice from the experts in the forums here.
I am getting increasingly serious about purchasing an office building here in Denver in the next few months.
My rationale:
- Office is essentially not trading right now on the market. The locations I am looking at (suburbs reasonably far from downtown and the Tech Center) have seen 3 total transactions in the last year. There's a lot for sale as well, and a lot for lease. It's just not moving at all. I like this. I think that this is the "blood in the water" thing that investors talk about.
- The examples have incredibly good math on paper. I believe that the spaces I am looking at would rent for $25-$30 per sqft. On a 4,650 sqft property listed at $1.1M, that's $116K - $140K per year in Gross Rents, and after NNNs, I believe I'm looking at a 10-12% Cap Rate on asking price. The property has been sitting for months. There are many like it.
- Even if it takes me 6 months to find a tenant at $25/sqft + NNNs, I would still generate more NOI in year 1 than on a multifamily property with similar square footage. Even if I have to wait 6 months and spend $50K on a different buildout, I'm still doing better by month 15.
- I believe that companies and the economy as a whole have begun a long-term shift towards back to in-office. And, that this return to office will manifest itself first in suburban areas with relatively less competition and shorter commutes for local workers, and that re-absorption of inventory will take a lot of time in urban areas with tons of vacancies. Thus, I am interested in suburban space near major cities, not the downtown inventory that is trading for pennies on the dollar, but often involve massive office complexes that will have huge holding costs until they get leased up.
I'd love to get beat up on this thesis. My worry is that while I am clear on the risks (extended timeline to get a tenant in, and expensive buildout) that I am not being nearly conservative enough - do I risk this thing sitting empty for a year, or years, and finally renting well below my implied rate?
The market just has so little volume that it's hard to tell what's realistic or not in the near-term.
But, this smells like a serious opportunity from where I sit. Things have to go really bad from here, as I see it, for the office to underperform alternatives in the next few years, from a cash flow perspective.