All Forum Posts by: Tristan Gardner

I hate Quickbooks and am in the process of switching to Netsuite for our software business.

Maybe check out https://www.baselane.com/. It's free and has a ton of tools built-in for expense tracking, rent collections, doc management, checking, and savings.

A basic LLC will due if you're flying solo. This is something you'll probably want a lawyer to do for you. Yes, it's not the hard to do yourself and yes, Legalzoom is easy too, BUT the second you need that entity protection you want to ensure it's setup rocksolid. We're real estate guys, not legal business entity guys.

Ryan,

Have you learned to run your "worst case" numbers? If not, I'd recommend doing so. If I'm reading this right, you have 357k in potential capital. That could get you a 1m multifamily property and leave you with great reserves (157k).

When I look at the worst case of multifamily, it sets my mind at ease when i look at how much money really doesn't have to come in for me to break even. This is the beauty with a larger property. Even if I'm at 50ish% vacancy, my debt service is covered. You also have a giant reserve pile so I wouldn't even be worried in your case

Hi @Marisa Warren, I'd start by building up your relationships with lenders, agents, brokers, and investors in your area. Find local real estate clubs and see if anyone could mentor you. It could be something as small as them explaining the way they analyzed or structured a deal and why. Then see what value you can give them for free. Rinse and repeat 

Of course! Remember you're not calculating your cost to live in the property. Even if you did, you're probably paying way below the market rent anyways. Think about it like this:

My home mortgage is $1000 per month. I rent my second room for $700 leaving -$300. Your "rent" is $200 per month, and you own the asset. If you lived somewhere else, you'd pay $700. Without factoring in scale, you'd be breaking even.

I'd keep up the house hacking until you've got the capital to scale. 

@Austin Latty not sure if there's an official rule, but I see it more on the Facebook group than here

@Nestor Vega do you have your capital ironed out? beginnings of the contractor relationships? multiple lenders lined up?

Drive around the B and C neighborhoods and find the worst house in the best neighborhood you can afford. Reall try and make an effort to analyze 5-10 real deals each day so you can quickly identify the good and bad deals. This way you can stay focused and help weed out the bad stuff when you see them

Brent, huge props for posting this on BP for not only the peer investment opinions but also the "100,000 foot view" ideas.

Oh my is right man. Is it possible for you/her to acquire an asset that produces the payment amount before she starts college? What if the investment fails and she's left with 200k in student loan debt? Or maybe underperforms and there's 100k? That may be tieing up some needed cash in an illiquid asset. 

Congrats @Phuoc NguyenAlot of the times starting is the biggest step!

Some lenders will go up to 80% LTV, but this still might not be enough in your case depending on you down payment size

I'd agree with others and house hack the property. I think your pure cash flow (cash after expenses, repairs, capex, etc) will be too low if you decided to rent the property just to find another.