All Forum Posts by: Aaron Taylor

 I think Mike has the right idea.  I've been in computers for 30 years and have owned everything from Apple II's to 286's to cyrix to macs to present day.  The best bang for buck are those laptops with a 256gb SSD drive and long battery life.  Some of those have 8 to 10 hour battery life and can be repaired much easier (and cheaper) than an Apple product.  I own an iPhone currently, but for computers the Windows 10 laptops are just too good of a deal with the SSD...performance, battery life, and cheap.  Like $500ish.

 Thanks.  My work uses UBS and they're slow as molasses when doing anything.  I think the last one took 7 days from sale to into my bank account.  Now normally I wouldn't need cash on short notice, but occasionally there might be 'deal' where I need quite a bit of cash on fairly short notice...that only happens every couple years though.

@Paul Allen who can transfer it in one day?  I have accounts with 3 different online brokers and they're all super slow about adding/removing money via ACH.  It seems like by the time I sell it, do the transfer, and it shows up in my other account it has been about a week at best.

Are there any banks which allow seamless transfer from a brokerage account to a personal account, all at the same bank?  It seems like they're all separate.  Or maybe I should state what I'm looking for which is a quick way to get money in and out of a brokerage account.  It seems like no matter what brokerage I use, the funds transfer in and out takes several days.  That makes it less convenient to use when you think you might need cash with less than a two weeks notice, you're not sure if you can actually get the money in time.

This thread is pretty interesting to me as well, as I think I've been through all the stages here.  I think what I landed on is where I'm at (KC Kansas side) I either have to invest for appreciation, go to KCMO, go to small towns with zero appreciation, or go syndicate.  So given those choices I've gone syndicate to start, as it's just easier for the returns.  At the prices now here you're lucky to get a 10% return on anything, so it feels like there's no compelling reason to buy local property over the stock market/syndicate deal when they'll typically return 10%+ for no work.  

The exception is if a great deal came along, then it would be worth it, but the way it is now, might as well just keep it in the index fund until a return of 15% is available locally (which looks like it will be more syndicate deals for me probably down the road until the market corrects).

 In my state of Kansas they usually increase to exactly what the purchase price was.  So if it was a $50k tax appraised home paying 1k in taxes and it sold for $100k, the taxes would instantly move to the 100k appraised value and $2k tax bill.  Other states may be different, I'm just relaying my experience.  There's a lot of tax appraisals that are way behind right now in my area currently due to appreciation of the past few years.

It's definitely something to be aware of when buying a property.  When things are rapidly appreciating, the property taxes usually lag behind, sometimes undervaluing a property by 50%.  The problem comes when you plug in the existing property tax into your financial model and see "Hey, this will cash flow great!" but don't calculate the new property tax based upon your purchase price.  There are lots of properties near me where on the surface they look good ($1000 property tax bill, cash flow very good) but the assessed value is 1/2 of the asking price currently, so the next year when taxes double to $2k, your cash flow goes way down.

I've never done a real estate deal with friends or family, but I did do a business with a friend.  My advice is to never get yourself into a situation where a friend or family member has financial or decision making power over you, because you never know when it will go south and ruin your personal relationship.  Like in your case, should the in-laws decide to not pay rent for some reason, what options do you have?  Probably zero.  Or if they start paying late, etc.  It would just be an uncomfortable place to be.

Having somebody who's doing the same thing you're trying to do is generally going to be really helpful.  If they're local, they'll have contractors, insurance contacts, banks, etc that could all be pretty helpful, and can advise you on properties and areas.  The hardest part though is finding one.  I think the biggest thing is to just put yourself out there and good things will eventually happen.  Good luck!

I would say definitely go for it in this market, as long as that 22% is accounting for vacancy, repairs, and cap-ex...because if you're not that 22% could actually be a lot lower.  But if that's figured in, that sounds like a great deal.