All Forum Posts by: William Shimerman

like @Chris Tracy mentioned, a lot of the larger companies put out quarterly reports on various markets. You can go to their websites and subscribe. The reports will get you a general understanding of market cap rates to use as a benchmark.

Hi Stephen,

This is a pretty uncommon practice in Los Angeles. There are times where a buyer is also a broker and would want to represent themselves thereby taking the buyside commission, yet brokers generally are fee-motivated and unless they are also a syndicator, it is a difficult argument to make for a broker to give part of the commission to the buyer.

As @Nathan Diones said, Docusign is a great tool. Last time I checked, you even get 3 free documents before they make you pay for a membership. Another program/tool that would work is called Adobesign. It is one of the Adobe platforms and works extremely well with Adobe Acrobat/PDF in case you need to edit documents. 

@Kyle Mitchell try meetup.com. It usually has numerous investor and real estate meetups. You should keep it might that obviously some are going to be better than others. Also, there is a good event company called Biznow that does local Q&A with industry leaders on a frequent basis. Unfortunately, you have already missed the "big" multifamily conference which is RealShare. 

If you are going to be keeping most things in the cloud, you might want to look into a Chromebook. Personally, I have always preferred a laptop over a tablet

Here in Los Angeles we have seen some overbuilding in Class A buildings, particularly in the downtown area. In fact, absorption has slowed and leasing has slowed. Rent growth has slowed which lends people to believe that we are getting towards the top of the market. Like @Joel Owens said, there will always be demand for Class B apartments no matter where we are in a given real estate cycle. In places like Los Angeles - vacancy rates are around 3% - there is not much room for additional downward pressure on Class B. Class C properties might experience some pressure from those in B- properties who are willing or forced to move to Class C.

@Tj Hines As Andrew mentioned, because of common areas, etc you will have a difficult time recovering 100% of the utilities ( I try not to use the word "never"). Check with your local municipalities, however, in Los Angeles the owner pays for the expenses and then "bills back" the RUBS fees to the tenants. The way our team values deals, we include RUBS as "additional income" and the owner's portion as expenses. That way everything is accounted for. 

RUBS can be a complicated issue as some municipalities do not allow it. In general, RUBS allow you to split the expense of water, trash, etc on a pro-rata basis and add it to the tenant's rental amount. 

Farakh, 

In general, I would say if it is a 4plex you can get away with purchasing 1 washer/dryer for the property. No sense giving away a large percentage of your laundry income to the laundry leasing company. Coin collection if you owned it would be up to someone you trust who lived nearby to empty out the machines. 

The credit card machines work well, however, I am only familiar with the companies that operate in Los Angeles. An added bonus is that you wouldn't have to deal with coin collection.

Best

Also, check your contract for dates. A lot of those contracts have an auto-renewing term unless you cancel with sufficient time before the contract expires/renews. best of luck.