New Investor from Los Angeles, CA

[Christian Mkpado]

Hi BiggerPockets Community,

I have been utilizing BiggerPockets for the past few months while building the knowledge to start my own investing career. I feel it is about time that I come out of the shadows and introduce myself! My business partner and colleague @Glen Gunawan have started a real estate acquisitions and investment firm based in Los Angeles, CA. We are open to suggestions and comments as we are new and looking to improve our strategy as we push forward. Below is a short introduction into what my partner and I aim to achieve over the next ~9 months:

Direct Mailing Campaign:

We will start sending out mailers next week on 9/19. We will mail a list of approximately 1,500 owners once a month for 9 months. Our mailers will cycle through the following mail types: professional letters x 2, handwritten letters x 2 (not yellow letters; cream colored letters, not lined, with a logo / letterhead), postcards x 2, professional flyers x 2, zipletter x 1. We have decided on the above mailers based on research indicating that multi-family / apartment owners in Los Angeles, CA tend to be more sophisticated and respond better to more professional mailers. We will also experiment with cold-calling the more attractive property owners on our list.

Property Criteria:

We are focused on acquiring 4 - 12 unit multifamily / apartment complexes in Los Angeles, CA. Geographically we are focusing on the area north of Exposition, east of S La Brea, south of the Hills and west of the Downtown. It is a large area, but we are casting a wide net to increase our chances of success.

Investing Strategy:

Our primary purpose of undertaking this direct marketing campaign is to acquire properties for our own portfolio. We are aiming to acquire assets that have deferred maintenance, under market rents, and/or poor management. We will force appreciation through rehabbing units, bringing rents up to market and controlling expenses. We are aware of LA rent control and will be paying tenants to move out when necessary. After we have re-positioned the property we will refinance to pull out equity and repeat the process.

We plan on using the BiggerPockets platform to learn, grow and connect with other RE professionals:

• Flippers / Rehabbers / Investors: Given that we are undertaking an extensive marketing campaign we will most likely have deals that don't fit our criteria or have too many deals to execute ourselves. Although we cannot execute on these deals that does not mean that they will not work for someone else!
• Real Estate Agents: Many of our leads may be more interested in selling their property on the open market. We hope to connect with local real estate agents that specialize in multifamily / apartments / commercial assets for any deals that we cannot close or wholesale ourselves.
• Lenders: We will need various types of financing (hard money, private lenders and bridge financing) while executing deals. My partner and I have stable incomes and will be able to support large interest payments through the duration of the project even without income from the subject property.
• Equity Partners: Although we would like to execute on every deal that we source, it is inevitable that we may run into situations where we do not have the financing available to undertake a high cost project with great potential returns. In the event of this situation we would rather share a great deal rather than risk letting it slip away.

I’m looking forward to embedding further with the BiggerPockets community in the future and I hope to connect with many of you soon. We will continue to update the community on our progress as we begin this journey. Happy to clarify any questions anyone might have.

Best,

Christian M.