All Forum Posts by: Sean Cole

A recession isn't defined as stagnant (no growth) - it's defined as a shrinking economy.  Rent prices in 1 market aren't an indicator of anything aside from rent prices in that market.

Have you done any work to it since buying it?

Wow, @Chris Martin that's a huge assumption!  Takes guts for sure since there's not even a bill in Congress yet and his "plan" was a single-sided piece of paper.

Remember that no president sets the tax rates we pay.  They can propose whatever they want, but it's Congress that passes the bill to the President.

Your business card is fine.  It'd be fine, too, if it were just a white background with your contact info.  Or a pink one.  Or whatever.

Spend more time finding houses and less time designing websites, business cards, "building a team," etc.  The design of a business card hasn't ever bought or sold a deal for me - or cost me one, either.

@Nathan Gesner, I do have a full grasp of the math.  My point is that a traditional roof yields a -100% return by definition.  Yes, there's a full financial analysis here than could be done comparing the total initial outlay of the Tesla roof vs. a traditional roof with an investment of the difference in initial outlay between the 2, while accounting for electric savings on the Tesla roof.

And the math is also different depending on where you live in the US, relative to days of sunshine, cost of housing, etc.

@Nathan Gesner I think we've said the same thing, with a different spin on it.  Personally, I'd let someone pay me $186.67 a year to have their roof on my house.

Compare this to a traditional roofing system...

$0 Value of Energy
$7,500 Cost of roof
$0 Cost of Powerwall battery
$0 Tax Credit

-$7,500 net earned over 30 years

That's a $13,000 swing from a net loss to a net gain, and it assumes that Johnny Homeowner could get his roof done for the same that I can.  Most pay far more for a roof here than that.

 It's more than $30/year... As I read the results on the calculator, you'd be earning back 100% of the cost of the roof and batteries PLUS the $900.  In other words, they're saying that, over the course of 30 years, "they'll" pay you $900 to have the roof installed on your house for free.  

Of course, there's no TVM assumption here.  I also need to do some more reading, but I think that the system is closed, such that all of the power generated goes to the PowerWall instead of being able to send excess back to the grid for a credit.  Perhaps these don't generate enough power to need to do that, but I'd certainly want to be able to do something with excess power generated if my PowerWall was fully charged.

 What winds up happening is that too many investors go find a DJ, photographer, and wedding planner before they've even got a boyfriend or girlfriend - to continue your analogy.

Too many people never get started investing because they're too busy out "building a team" instead of "buying a house."  When an investor calls me or emails me and references "team" in any way, they get put at the bottom of the pile because I've never met one of those folks who actually moved forward with investing.

Just 1 reason that it doesn't make sense to focus on "building a team" before you "buy a house" is that you don't know who you need until you know what you need to get done. An attorney is only needed to draft your LLC docs if it's required in your state or you can't figure out how to do it on your own (at least in Ohio, it's super easy). A CPA isn't needed until you've already done a deal. A contractor isn't needed until you have a job for them to bid.

Gurus talk about "building a team" first because they know (I suspect) that most will spin their wheels doing that for long enough to milk them for a few thousand extra dollars in "coaching."  You'll learn far more doing your 1st deal than any coach, guru, expert, website can ever teach you.  Get out there and do it!

Anytime I get a call or email from someone who mentions their "team" or that they're going to rehab any more than 3 houses in a year, experience tells me that I'll never sell them a house.  Most of the volume folks that I work with never talk about how many they do in a year or how many they have going on at 1 time.

I don't blame anyone for it - it's just the way that it is.  My business is a numbers game, so if a house isn't right for 1 person, I'll call the 30 other people that it probably is right for.