Aloha! Investor in Hawaii looking for Deals on island or mainland

[Laren Eustace]

Aloha Everyone,

Wow, I am so glad I found this podcast and site! Real estate investing has been something that has been on my heart for a while, and this is just the next step in my commitment to take massive action.

A little background about myself...

I am a recent 2018 college graduate from Indiana University, and I moved out to Hawaii on a whim shortly after graduation last July. I originally started out as a Finance major with the intent of becoming one of those hot shot investment bankers on Wall Street. However, as I progressed through the curriculum in my major classes, it left much to be desired. Although the "Black Scholes model" and "CAPM" sound great in theory, I didn't find much practicality in many of the theories that my professors were teaching to us. I felt like we could do hours of analysis and number crunching for all these stocks, but in the end, nobody really knew how the stocks were actually going to perform! That's why during my senior year of college I decided to pick up a real estate major along with my finance major and WOW, it was so much more engaging and practical than any of what I learned in any of my finance classes. I just love the tangibility of real estate and how you have more control of the variables in the process of acquisition, development, and management. Call me naive, but in my experience so far, real estate people are some of the most creative and solution-oriented people that I have come across, and many of them have been open with me about common pitfalls to avoid and creative strategies to overcome some of the obstacles that new investors face.

Although I did have some opportunities for jobs in finance out of college, I decided to follow my passion in real estate and move out to Honolulu, Hawaii to pursue a career in commercial real estate brokerage. As empty nesters, my parents moved from our home in the suburbs of Chicago to Hawaii while I was in college, so I was lucky enough to be able to pursue a commission-only job while living rent free in paradise. Things started quickly for me, and I was able to get a listing for a 3,000sf industrial warehouse within the first two months of joining my brokerage. I spent every day for the next few months knocking on doors, calling business owners, and going to networking events to get my name out there and market the property. With all my hard work, I was able to find an unrepresented buyer and move forward into the escrow process. Unfortunately, at the 11th hour, the buyer dropped out and I had to start the process all over again. At that time, I was 9 months into my job and I still hadn't made a single dime. My parents remained supportive of my efforts, but also explained that they would not let me live at home rent free forever. At this point, I made the tough decision to put my brokerage job on hold and get a W-2 job as a commercial credit analyst at the bank to get some money coming in. The end goal is to get enough cash to move out of my parents house ASAP and eventually do real estate investing full time with the intention of helping others in their real estate investing journey as well.

Also, during this time, I am assisting my parents with a flip here in Hawaii. We acquired the property in December 2018 at $525k using a combination of my parents self-directed IRA and some hard money. It was in need of a lot of repairs, but comps in the area run anywhere from $700-800K. Although there is still some significant fat left in the deal, and we underwrote for a 1 year timeline, there have been many hiccups along the way. The permitting process took much longer than expected, and there were additional problems with the electrical systems in the house. Not only that, but the contractor that we hired was doing some pretty shoddy work, for which we had to hire a different contractor to redo. I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we are cutting it pretty close on our timeline with the hard money lender. It can definitely be pretty stressful, but I understand how much of this can be a learning experience for future deals.

After this deal, I would love to learn how to do deals remotely and not have to be as hands-on with the day-to-day activities. At this point, I am pretty open to doing pretty much any strategy (wholesaling, flipping, buy and hold etc.), however, I do not have a ton of capital to fund a down payment at this time. I am looking forward to doing deals with all of you in the near future! Please feel free to reach out to me on here. I would love to talk real estate investing, or if any of you are living in Hawaii or happen to be visiting, lets set up a time to meet up!

Mahalo,

Laren Eustace

[Eric M.]

So, think of all the issues you had with the flip in state, all the times you had to meet with the contractor, the times you went to the jobsite and caught him doing crappy work or not there at all, the times you had to go to the Building department to sort out permits.....

Now imagine not being in the same state to do all those things. It is exponentially more difficult.