All Forum Posts by: Abdul Azeez

Got it. Thanks. I would really appreciate if any agents specializing in the central to South Jersey market can private message me.

Thank you. It took me hours to narrow down from 150 to 17. I thought I could see these and make an offer on say 5 of them and maybe 1 gets accepted. But i see you have recommended only seeing 5 or 6. I am not in favor of paying agent commission upfront. 

Hello all - I am having a little bit of starting trouble. I met with my agent with whom I have previously listed my home two weeks back. We agreed on the criteria that he would use to set up MLS listings alerts for me. I received alerts and saw that it had around 150 properties in the areas we had talked about. I ran deal analysis on almost all of them and shortlisted 17 that I thought are attractive. I asked to see these 17 around a week back so that I know which ones I could make an offer on. This weekend being a long weekend would be good to see these houses. My agent said he is trying to arrange someone from his office who can drive me to these 17 properties over a 3 hour period over the weekend and I could see them. This was told on Tuesday. It's Saturday now and I have no confirmation. I am not sure if my agent has difficulties arranging this or not but in either case I would think the professional thing to do is keep me informed but this has not happened. What should I do now? Should I switch to someone else? I just went with this agent because he had previously listed my property and I thought he would be helpful. For reference I am looking to invest in central to South Jersey and am looking for agents who know also do investing in these areas. Kindly advise.

its 10 percent of monthly rent and it is a rule of thumb based on general guidance.

to add to my original list.

1. Try shopping at Aldi if you have not been doing so before.

2. Shop around for car insurance and see if you can get better rates.

3. If you are into buying books, ditch the habit and start using your local library.

4. Instead of watching movies at the theater wait until a Redbox release.

5. Try to explore additional certifications in your field of interest and see if you can get your employer to pay for it. Leverage the education for a job with better pay.

6. If you switch over and buy a used car check if liability insurance will cover your purposes or whether you need a full coverage.

7. Instead of spending money on entertainment see if you can replace with free activities that provide you more of a life experience like hiking etc.

8. Instead of giving your shirts out for ironing / dey cleaning, wash at home and luse the dryer. Drop some ice blocks and set the heat high on drying and then hang your shirts. This will give a pressed appearance.

9. Instead of doing out for coffee at work or home, use a French press and buy your favorite coffee and make the same.

10. See if there is any local community college that will pay you for conducting courses related to your field of experience.

Why would I do that? I have a sizeable mutual fund portfolio generating market returns. The interest is to diversify and explore the real estate space for passive income. 

What other area would I be looking at? I am not savvy enough to invest in out of state properties. 

Before putting into practice you need to analyze. That's the fundamental point of doing your due diligence.

I am not questioning that gains can be made but they seem to provide an overoptimistic picture of double digit returns which seem unrealistic based on numbers I am running in my area.

There are several things you can do to reduce expenses. These are just my 2 cents.

1. If you are with one of the major cell phone carriers, switch to Cricket or something similar which can cut your bill.

2. You don't need to make a car payment at this time. Just replace your car with a used car that you can afford with full money down and get rid of car payments.

3. For recurring shopping, use upromise.com to link up to your shopping site to get a cash back in your account. For example, I am just installing laminate flooring and spent around 700 bucks in materials at Lowe's. By going through upromise.com and linking to Lowe's I get back $35 bucks. It's not a lot of money but when you have a lot of on-line shopping with associated retailers with upromise, the total adds up.

4. Instead of renting, try to partner with someone and try exploring the option of buying a multi-family unit where your rent is paid off by other tenants. I don't know about where you live but you may want to explore options by working with a real estate agent to see if there are properties available.