All Forum Posts by: Adam Sporinsky

What do other investors typically pay for Water/Sewer/Garbage service annually for a property in Chicago.  I am specifically looking at 3 and 4 unit buildings, and I don't know how to accurately estimate these costs.  Does the area or neighborhood matter for these prices?

Are there other utility costs I should be including in addition to these?  The properties I look at all have tenant paid electric and gas.

Any help with this is appreciated.

@Christopher Brainard Thank you very much, I appreciate the tip as well.

This should be an incredibly easy question for people to answer, I'm just checking to make sure I am right about a few things.

The Realtor.com website section on listings for property taxes confuses me a little bit.  For instance on this listing (picked at random): http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1...

The property tax section has three headings, Taxes, Land, and Additions, Then a Total Assessment.  The numbers here are 2403 for Taxes, 2625 for Land, and 10589 for Additions, giving a total of 13,214 (sum of Land and Additions).  When I run calculations on a property as a buy and hold, is 2403 the number I use for the property tax per year? or do I need to be using the taxes + land value or some other combination of the numbers.

I am pretty sure I know the answer, and I think that the 2403 is what would be paid yearly, but I want to verify that that is correct, and also find out what the other numbers mean and why they are there.  Is the Taxes number of 2403 calculated as some percentage of the sum of Land and Additions for instance?  What are additions anyway?

@Crystal Smith Thank you for the great list, that should keep me busy for a while!  Any favorites in that list or ones that seemed to have the most success, or were they all pretty solid?  Thanks for the nugget on the difficulty of multi family in the burbs as well.

@Justin Ericsson That's two votes for South Holland, I think I'll start my research there.  Thanks!

I have lived in the city of Chicago for 7 years and know a pretty good amount about the various neighborhoods in the city, and I have what I feel is a decent list of target areas.  When it comes to the Chicago suburbs however, I am pretty ignorant.  There are so many suburbs to look at, I don't think it would be very efficient to just wing it and look into values and comps in all of them.

What are some suburbs of Chicago that offer good deals or are up and coming today? My goal is to do several SFH flips, but my longer term plan involves multi unit buy and holds, so advice on burbs for either strategy are very welcome. I have heard good things about Oak Park, Forest Park and Berwyn, but beyond that I don't really know where to look. Any suggestions from the other successful investors targeting the Chicago suburbs have recommendations for places to start looking into so that I can finish building my criteria?

Hey @Pascale Jean welcome to bigger pockets. Something that could help with your fears or worries would be reading Rich Dad Poor dad, or the millionaire real estate investor. Both books do a good job of giving reasons those fears may be misplaced and outlining how to do things in REI correctly in order to minimize any mistakes.

Obviously I have missed this meeting, but is there somewhere I can join or stay informed about upcoming meetings for this group?

Thanks for the answer. It is my understanding that each entity needs to have a separate account, is that correct? (I haven't set mine up yet. As an aside, do you think I should do that before getting the first property if I plan to FHA/203K and live in the first one, or would having it in an entity at time of sale complicate my process?)

I am also looking forward to responses from the truly successful members here, but I think yours is a great answer to get us started.

When the investors here have cash saved up for down payment money on a new investment property, do you store that money in a standard bank account, in the market, in some other liquid investment?  Some combination of the above?

What about reserve cash, my assumption would be that most people keep reserve cash in a more stable account like a bank account or money market, but does anyone do things differently?  Especially for people who might store down payment money in the market or a less stable but higher interest vehicle.

Do people use one account per property, or one account for all of their properties and just manage the amount in it to cover reserve for all of the properties thy own?

What are the successful investors best practices for the cash they need to do business?