Tired of shopping for apartment complexes

[Jack B.]

Almost every person I deal with wants to only provide proforma numbers of their best case scenario with no capex or vacancy built in. I ask for schedule E and they claim the have only owned the property for 2 years. OK, then why don't you have 2 years of tax returns????? Out of all the times I've asked sellers or brokers, only once has anyone immediately sent the schedule E of their returns. And it was clear then their proforma numbers left out the 20K a year loss due to paying all the utilities. on an 8 unit building in Alaska...

I'm finding the task of finding and dealing with MF investments to be unreasonably time consuming not to mention frustrating and extremely risky. I've gotten used to the ease of finding a house and quickly crunching rent and mortgage numbers to decide yay or nay. A quick inspection buy my trusted and overqualified inspector and basic number crunching of area rents and the mortgage and maintenance expenses, and voila, I have a deal. With the MF, it seems to always be a game of what kind of problem is this clown dumping on me?

Really starting to reconsider investing in MF. If nothing else this summer I will sell several houses and uses the equity to 1031 into exchange maybe 3 for 6. Multi family just seems really risky. As long as you do due diligence I think it's reasonably safe, not as safe as a house, but the problem is the sellers are dumping problem properties and trying to pump up their numbers in the process of dumping them on unsuspecting investors.

[Thomas S.]

Due diligence on a multi is no more difficult that a SFH from my experience. The fact is regardless of what I am buying the sellers numbers mean very little in either situation. Sellers numbers are only a guideline that can rarely be fully believed with out due diligence.

A sellers numbers are going to tell you the expenses are low and their tax returns are going to tell you the expenses are high. That is how successful businesses operate.

The up side of dealing with a seller that does not have good records is that I make them pay for their incompetence in my offer price. I love to hear them argue a higher price when they have zero proof to support it and my offer is 100% supported by fact.