All Forum Posts by: Dean Letfus

@Jay Hinrichs, I don't want to hijack this thread but I'm very interested in these notes Jay. I assume you mean Iron Bridge. What do you consider the biggest risk to be?

If you mean an appraiser has appraised the property then that value should be in the ballpark of sale price although often it isn't. Who knows why. IF you mean tax appraisal that has zip to dow with market value. You ultimately need to learn what houses are worth in the areas you're buying in.

Don't go near Memphis. It's a tough city with an enormous amount of dishonest wholesalers, go somewhere safer when starting.

@Dan Deppen, our values are easier to ascertain being a small nation and we don't tend to have the variation in suburbs that America has. Good areas are generally all good and bad areas are generally the same. So as our overall housing pool is so small, a valuer can look at all recent sales of similar sized homes and land in a 1 to sometimes up to 3 mile radius and establish pretty accurately what a house should sell for.  Of course there are variations in build quality and amenities but these move the value much less than in the USA.  So it takes about 10 minutes to pick pretty much any street and know this is a $500,000 to $550,0000 street.
On a property worth say $750,000 which is a cheap house in Auckland these days you might get a variation of 50K in valuations but that would be it.

The industry is also regulated so the banks only use their own panel valuers and any valuer who is seen to be inflating or deflating values to advantage his client would end up in legal trouble pretty quickly.

There is very little in common between the 2 countries @Brenden Mitchum. NZ is highly regulated, very expensive, and money is hard to come by. We have no REO industry, no private note industry, houses generally sell for what they are worth. So build a portfolio in the USA as it's so, so easy by comparison.

The USA is like the wild west to an NZ investor, that's why we come here. it's just so easy to get going in the USA. NZ is really difficult in comparison.

Just to give you one abstract example. If an NZ realtor sells a house for less than it's retail value, he can be sued and fined, lose his license, even go to jail!!

Stick to people you can trust, they're probably busy  because they are good at what they do.

You're probably more confused than when you started asking but I think it's worth noting, most of the guys with the most experience are saying no. And none of us have a dog in this fight. So maybe look for a better deal?

I can't believe how well Memphis is doing! Investment money pouring in, population stable, house price increasing. It's almost like a normal city :-)!

You may need to be better educated on your own market perhaps @Brian Wingard.  In Memphis for example areas have a definite cap and so it's easy to over capitalise and not get it back. IF you are in a town/area that is like that then your starting point has to be "What will this appraise for?"  Then you work back your rehab costs and purchase price to create the end result you want.

Multifamily in Memphis is really difficult to manage. My original mentor who manages thousands of doors always complained about how hard it is to make them work. Tenant quality in Memphis is just awful. Find a better city for MF unless you are on the ground, preferably onsite, carry a gun and can manage them yourself!!