New Year, New Posts

To the one person following my blog as of today, it should be apparent that I have not posted in 9 months. This coincides with when I got hired at one of the most awesome tech companies in Silicon Valley: LinkedIn. 

Now that I've gotten somewhat settled at my new job (things never get dull here), I'm going to try to flesh out some of my ideas and begin posting more useful content. In addition, I'll be actively searching for properties using my methodology and perhaps even closing a deal this year. 

Challenges Moving Forward 

• Information. While I still believe that financial analysis is rather straightforward, the difficulty now is finding a reliable source of information to plug in to the model. If you're buying homes, Zillow / Trulia / Redfin / etc., all can provide decent starting information, but you'll need to provide some assumptions for important values such as rent and maintenance & repairs. 
• Financing. Rates are rising and unless we have another recession, this trend is unlikely to change. This can affect the profitability of a deal big time and affect the sort of financing you choose. In addition, if you're like me and are 23 and have a limited employment history, it'll be very difficult to get financing on decent terms. 
• Partners. Even if you have all of the above set up perfectly, all it takes is a bad partner or two to sour the whole thing. The best advice I've gotten on how to choose a partner is to ask yourself if they're someone you'd marry. If your potential partner has different life goals, working styles, or communication preferences that clash with your own, it doesn't matter if they're Warren Buffett - it'll just end up badly. Hopefully a combination of BiggerPockets, referrals, and Meetups will help me find good people to work with. 

Next Post

That's it for now. My next blog post will be about the financial model I use for evaluating deals. 

See you in 9 months! (Though probably sooner).