All Forum Posts by: William C.

Dotloop is definitely what you are looking for to be able to "pump out a high volume" of offers. You can template the offer to literally prefill all the info and simply create a new "loop" for each property. You can change the price and dates in a matter of minutes and the offer is ready to be sent. Also mentioned before, it's the time spent communicating with the sellers agent and following up on each offer that becomes the time consuming part. I think the best advice for what your trying to do is to work directly with the selling agent for each one. It cuts out the "middleman". Yes it requires more effort on your part, but as you've noticed most agents aren't going to be very excited to be doing the work for you. The "opportunity" to list the home on the back end is simply not enough to have agent go through effort you given the low success rate. Your looking for a magic software that will automate the process for you but it just doesn't exist. If it did, everyone would run the software and buying and selling real estate would all be done by the software and we would all be millionaires. There is a human element that is required through the process. This is what makes the "job" hard, and is why the margins can be large when you do things right. So with that said either find a way to submit these offers yourself to the listing agent, or hire an assistant in house to do it for you. $10/hour would be fair? I'm sure you could find someone willing to do it. An agents value is not in pushing paper, and that's what you are asking for here. In terms of a project management platform, I use Trello to manage my flips. You can assign others the the project and upload documents and track to lists. You can probably template these as well to scale the process, but unfortunately there is no way to "automate" this. You need humans for the input. If you can't do it yourself, train someone willing to do it for an hourly rate. Lastly, and most importantly, it was asked before but never answered....if your mentor has so much experience, why not simply use the agent he has used for all his properties up until now? Again just like the software you are looking for doesn't exist, neither does the competent agent that is willing to do what's your asking. Roll up your sleeves, build a process that is repeatable, and then teach someone else to do it for you. There's no magic button to push to automate the entire buying process, agents wouldn't exist and Zillow would be where everyone went to buy and sell homes with the click of a button. Disclaimer: this statement may be false in the next 10 years.

@Benn Albrecht that's a tough decision to make, and I eluded to that in an earlier post on the subject.

@Cody L. also said he could spend appreciation "it's called refinancing" and he makes a great point by saying it's a non taxable event.

So I agree Cody, that's another way to spend appreciation. Benn, I can't answer that question for you but my advise would be to be careful not to overly wage TOO far. If your still cash flowing, and the "value" drops, like iv said before it's on paper, who cares if your underwater. Your collecting cash flow each month. It would be difficult to be underwater unless a bank gives you more than 80% LTV and your on a long amort schedule. The marketing would have to crash hard. Also, if it were me, I'd refi to cash outans reinvest in more property that cash flows. If you refi to cash out and spend it on a down payment on a Lamborghini that will Bown cost $1000/month, we all know where that story ends.

David Faulkner I appreciate your point of view. And to be honest I'll have to admit that I do agree with you. Appreciation does increase cash flow. So don't get me wrong, I certainly am not ignoring it when it comes to the properties I invest in. I guess what I was trying to say is that unless you sell, appreciation isn't real. For example, a person could have purchased a home for $200k in 2004. In 2007 their property very well could have been worth $300k. One might say his "net worth" increased $100k. But this is where appreciation is a tricky asset. If the investor sold, then yes, they made a capital gain of $100k. If the investor held, well we know that in 2008-2009 that property value likely fell down close to his 2004 level, or $200k. So did he make any money? On paper he made $100k and then lost $100k, but in real life nothing happened. If there was no cash flow on this property, then his return on investment would be close to zero or negative. So again, I love appreciation, I think it's a great way to build wealth over a long period of time by riding out the cycles, or in a short period of time like Jay mentioned when he spends 8 months on a deal to cash a $200k check. Lets also differentiate appreciation from forced appreciation. I believe in the latter more that anything. Value add deals are in my opinion the single most profitable way to invest in real estate, whether you buy and hold or fix and flip, either way your rents are higher or sales prices are higher. Going back to the OP and the freedom number, if I buy $1 million in real estate today and it's worth $5 million tomorrow because the market appreciated, I'm no richer than I was yesterday. On paper maybe, but not in real life. I can't spend appreciation. I can spend cash flow. I guess if I could only choose one I would choose cash flow. Although it's obviously better to have both and that's where the real money is made.

Are you working with an agent? They'll be able to steer you through the process. My question would be are you paying cash? If not, reducing the sales price of the home will not do anything to help you to replace these items in the near future. For example, let's say the repairs are $15k. If you reduce the sales price $15k, you simply are lowering your mortgage payment about $75 a month, and that's not going to help you pay for the repairs. If you paying cash, then it would help. You could ask the seller for a seller assist, or seller credit. You'll be limited in the amount by the type of mortgage but FHA allows up to 6% of the sales price. This would be actual cash that you would keep in your pocket at closing rather than paying towards closing costs that you could then use to make the repairs. Whether it's reasonable or not for the seller to pay for the items is going to depend on the deal. Didn't you see the roof was old and might need to be replaced? Same should go for the HVAC and water heater. It's easy to see the dates when these things were installed. So it depends if your offer was made knowing you had to make these repairs, or if they were a complete surprise to everyone, which is not Likely the case. Someone had to have some idea these items were nearing the end of their life. Best of luck.

Neil G. He could work on a per performance basis and that would be legal. He doesn't have to work for free, but your allowed to be an apprentice, or simply learn by doing instead of a salary. I guess my point is there are ways around the legality issues of working for "free".

That's a 3% cash on cash return. Is that typical for your market? I don't see much of an upside for appreciation at that price point either. It really depends on your goals, but personally I'd be walking away from a deal like that in my market. You would be better off in a mutual fund at that rate.

You should talk to a title company. You'll likely pay transfer tax based on the market value of the home, and title charges ranging from insurance to Doc prep etc etc. a title company is who will do this for you though.

Jack B. That makes sense. I couldn't find the correlation between 30k cash flow and $200k in appreciation. I'm in the greater Philadelphia market. We can see some pretty great cash flow in a few markets. Appreciation has never really interested me because in order to actually realize the gain you have to sell, or possibly refi. I'd rather hold, collect the cash, and pay down principal. Long term appreciation is just gravy. Refinancing to cash out would lower cash flow,unless I could deploy it into another deal. Appreciation is all well and good, but it's not a real asset in my opinion until it realized one way or another.

Tanya F. "About 15 million a year should be good". Made me chuckle too. I think your right. Some of these numbers might be a bit high. I know the podcast the OP is referring to. And the freedom number of I remember correctly was simply 1.25x your current expenses. So I think some people are going beyond their freedom number and taking about their BHAG. Big Hairy Audacious Goals. And that's great. For me my freedom number is covering my expenses so my wife and I do not HAVE to work. This brings me to a point Tony Wooldridge I saw you say trying to fill time freedom is a good problem to have, and that we can figure it out. You might actually be surprised to find out once you reach that point, and say quit your job, that having TOO much time on your hands can be unfulfilling. I used to think I wasn't to retire at 35 and sit back and do whatever I wanted all day long. Iv built my business so that I'm self employed, and make my own schedule and the times I am most unhappy or unfulfilled are the times where I have nothing going on. I thought the goal was to work real hard so we can stop working and enjoy free time but for the most part the rest of the world around you will be at school/work so filling that one void day in and day out might seem like a fun problem to solve but it could be harder than you think. Yea, spending time with my kids is great. I don't know that Its possible to spend MORE time with them, from 8-3 they are in school 180 days a year. Maybe others are forced to work nights and weekends and may be missing out on that time with their kids, but "retiring" really wouldn't lend me anymore time with my kids. Anyway the ultimate goal should be to be free from HAVING to work a day job and long hours but if you can find something you enjoy you'll likely stick with it once "freedom" is achieved and you'll probably be much more fulfilled do it, rather than trying to fill that time each day. Just my 2 cents.

Jack B. I gotta ask what kind of asset class your in? Those numbers have my head hurting. $30k in cash flow and $200k in appreciation a year? I can't figure out if it's a $10 million dollar property appreciating at 2%, or a 800k property appreciating at 25% a year....the cash flow would make more sense for $800k. Are you seeing $200k year after year? Or just a once time Fixup and forced appreciation type of deal? I'm think I'm in the wrong market. We've seen a steady appreciation over the last 5 years, but probably only about 30% total, or 6% a year. Historically Real Estate typically appreciates at about 2% a year, so it's been good, but that also tells me I should expect to decline or leveling out in the near future based on the last 100 years of data. Curious to hear your situation. Sounds like you are doing very well in your market. Best of luck the appreciation continues at that rate.