All Forum Posts by: Sean O'Dowd

Just jumping in to agree that Quickbooks is great and hard to beat.

If you want something with a bank account attached, my company uses Mercury (bank account and lite-accounting software). It's free and I really love it thus far

Hi Josue-congrats on taking the plunge!!

Not sure what your investing niche is, but my recommendation would be to focus on multi-family commercial properties. The loan process is WAY easier. 

(For reference: I am CEO of my own company so technically self-employed. As @Patrick mentioned, it's LLC as an S Corp).

In the past year, my wife and I bought a 6 unit and a personal residence.

On the 6 unit:

The bank asked to see the P&L of the property to ensure it cash flowed, appraised the property, and asked if we had enough cash for the down payment.

That was it. All in, it took me an hour to compile all the documents and talk on the phone with the lender. Super easy.

On the personal residence

This lender is 'flipping' the loan and selling it back. They were extremely worried that I didn't have a w2 income. Super candidly, my business is very profitable and my wife has a stable W2 job, but the bank was still skittish. They ended up asking for:

• Tax returns for last 3 years
• Monthly bank statements for last 2 years (24 statements)
• Monthly receipt of rent paid for the last 3 years (36 receipts)
• Statements from all stock investment accounts
• Leases for all tenants (at the multi-family properties...which is CRAZY because the multi-lender didn't even ask for these)
• The naming rights to our second child (not seriously...but in line with their asks)

Hope this example helps. One took me an hour to do, one took me weeks and literally had 100's of documents needed because it wasn't straight W2 income.

If you are thinking about different investment strategies, I highly recommend commercial for this reason!

Welcome to real estate, Evan!!

It's honestly a great question (surprised more people haven't chimed in yet). I'll try to add my $0.02, but the disclaimer is that I'm not an agent. My clients are, however, so I get to see a third party perspective of what works and what doesn't.

There are obviously a TON of different strategies to get leads (circle prospecting, door knocking, zillow, etc.). However, I think most new agents who find success end up focusing on one strategy and become absolutely stellar at that strategy. Only after they've reached 'success' at that prospective strategy do they move to the next.

I think this is a really important point because a lot of new agents (in my experience) try a new prospecting strategy for a day or two, don't get a bunch of leads, and then give up & start Googling best-prospecting strategies' and try something else. T

Pick one, stick with it, and make it happen! Good luck!

Disclaimer: I'm not an agent, but my customers are. It's given me a really interesting vantage point to see how some agents have been able to grow big businesses and what are commonalities between those agents.

The biggest commonality has been agents who spent a lot of time at the beginning of their relationship with their customers to define what 'good' looks like.

For example, let's imagine the agent is working with a couple who is trying to sell their house.

The rockstar agents spend a ton of time understanding everything they possibly can about how their clients think. For example:

• What does the ideal outcome look like for you?
  
• What is most important: sale price, close date, or something else?
• (now) Are you comfortable with open houses during COIVD?
  
• What does the ideal communication look like during this process?
  

These are just a few examples. The rockstar agents ruthlessly prioritize this aspect and spend 30+min with clients discussing these parameters.

Since the rockstar agents know all of this info ahead of time, they have the 'rubric' on how to succeed in their client's eye. It leads to really great transactions and tons of referrals.

Hey Carl! Congrats on getting ready to make that next move-it's a jump that not everyone makes so worth acknowledging that right off the bat.

Your story resonated as I actually was in the exact same place: working in my own consulting business before I went into real estate full time. If it's helpful, the way I thought about it was: if there is something (anything) I could do to increase my odds of success, it was worth doing.

In this case, it feels like getting your license is something that would increase your odds of success as an investor. In my mind, it makes it seem like a worthwhile investment in your own investing career.

Hope that helps!