Your First Multi-Family -- FAQ

[Nichole Stohler]

Hello BP community! We’ve followed BiggerPockets for years and a few months ago I posted in the success story forum on how my husband and I went from complete real estate failure and debt to coming back and buying a $5M property in 6 years. Some community members asked questions in the post about things like how we got started, when and how we “traded up” properties and why we chose certain exit strategies. Others asked about books we’d recommend and other resources.

So today, we’d like to go a step further and answer all of those questions and more that you might have. We’ve gotten so much from this community and really want to give back.

That’s why Mike and I decided to kick off a new thread where we’d be happy to answer any questions about things like how to decipher a commercial listing and what to look out for, funding, property management, etc.

To get started, we put our heads together and came up with the most frustrating or challenging aspects of multi-family. Here’s some of the topics we’re thinking of covering each week:

1. Financial foundations
2. Real estate business plan
3. Business structure
4. Networking & building your team
   
   1. Broker/agent
   2. Inspections
   3. Lawyer
   4. CPA
   5. Loan officer
5. Property analysis
   
   1. Location details
   2. Research
   3. Financial analysis
6. Making an offer
7. Funding
8. Closing the deal
9. Transitioning the property after close
10. Ongoing operations
11. Managing tenants
    1. Pride of ownership
    2. Communication
    3. Leases and addendum
    4. Evictions
12. Maintenance
    
    1. Repairs
    2. Preventative
    3. Specialty (Plumbing, Electrician, HVAC, Pool, Landscaping)
13. Vendors
    
    1. Laundry
    2. Trash
    3. Utilities
    4. Insurance
    5. Supplies
14. Profitability
    
    1. Increasing revenue
    2. Managing expenses
15. Adding value
16. Tools
    
    1. Software
    2. Hardware
    3. Other
17. Productivity & scalability
18. Exit strategies

Are we missing an area you’d like to see covered? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll add it to the list.

See you next week!