All Forum Posts by: Alecia Loveless

@Adam M. It’s only easy if you already know how to do it. The learning curve is probably great on importing large quantities or even just large things from a foreign company.

Personally when I’m working on a project time is money and I don’t have the ability to wait around to get supplies.

Maybe if you had a good, secure location to store things you could pre-order stuff you think you might need for your next project(s) and stockpile it.

@Justin R. I have 1/3 of your units and am paying about 1/3 for my QBO and my bookkeeper.

I made the leap to having a bookkeeper June 2024 and couldn’t be happier.

Has made my accounting and record keeping so much easier.

I don’t necessarily think what you’re paying is outrageous.

@Mary Jay All my properties cash flow.

When a tenant moves out or there is a repair 99% of the time I have reserves to cover those expenses because that was a requirement in my process of underwriting the property. These reserves do not factor in my cash flow. They are in addition to my cash flow.

If you underwrite your property correctly you should know from the beginning what your cash flow will be.

@Erick Pena Hi Erick. Start by analyzing LOTS of deals. If there’s not enough deals in your market go to Crexi or Zillow in markets other than your own.

If you’re not already join BP Pro so you can use their calculator infinitely.

Once you’ve analyzed 50-100 deals you will start to get a feel for what YOU think is a good deal.

This can not be achieved if you’ve only analyzed a small number of deals.

@Keith Mintz Will you be running the house or leasing to a company that does sober living.

If you will be leasing be sure to get a good maintenance clause in your lease. I’d recommend something like the tenant is responsible for the first $500, $750, or whatever in repairs for each occurrence.

This way if there’s physical damage by residents the company pays the first $500 to fix it.

If there’s physical damage dishwasher goes out 3 times in one year like it has in the program I work at the company pays the first $500 towards repairs or the new one.

Just my $0.02 working in the industry.

@Devin La Croix I’ve got between $6,000-$12,000 saved in reserves per property. I’m still working to build it a little more. Ideally I’d like to get to $10,000-$15,000.

I’d recommend waiting till you have a cushion of some sort depending on your comfort level before you take the plunge and buy the second deal.

If you have a credit card with a high limit or a line of credit on the existing duplex that might give you some wiggle room. But if you get a major expense you could then potentially have a decent amount of debt.

One thing to consider on the credit card option is that a lot of contractors don’t accept them so that could be an issue.

@Edgar Duarte Depends on if you prefer owning real estate or want to be invested in the stock market.

In my situation if I’m earning $18,000 in cash flow from a property my tax benefits are offsetting at least that amount and I’m still paying $0 in taxes so the real estate scenario is attractive to me.

Personally I’ve got the majority of my assets in real estate. This is a real estate group so I’d assume a lot of people own a lot of real estate.

I’m trying to diversify some and build my Retirement Accounts with some stocks. However I can leverage 80% or more of my real estate to create massive holdings which I can’t do with stocks.

If you net a $300,000 profit from the sale of your current you could in theory invest in a $1.5MM property. That’s the power of leverage.

@Jordan Laney I was paying $60 per plow plus $90 per salt. My plow guy was sometimes doing both 3-4 times per storm. Last two years I averaged $4300 for the season. This was for a 50’ driveway and 4 parking spots.

This year I contacted him and said no more salt. I have a different option to get sanded IF the driveway becomes icy.

In November the bill was $180 and in December $300. Based on the storms we have had those two months I have already saved over $1300 in salting fees.

You may not be able to break the contract this year but would recommend getting additional estimates going forward if you feel it is expensive.

My building is in a small community and unfortunately the other plow guys I contacted for bids would not agree to take the account away from their peer. They all knew who I used to plow. It may not be so easy to just replace the company you have.

@Makani Donaldson I’ve been investing 5+ years and over my 31 units I average slightly more than $200/month.

I look to achieve the 1% rule when purchasing although in the current market it’s not a guarantee of cash flow.

@Maria McNally I’ve joined 3 coaching programs. The 1st was a complete waste and actually shut down during my 3rd week in. They removed all their content from the web and I got an email from my coach saying she no longer worked for the company.

The second one I still see out there. And it was represented as a program that could help you buy larger properties than you were buying currently. Unfortunately as the weeks went by my coach started pushing me to buy 50+ unit deals and to raise funds from investors. This was not what I was interested in doing and when I voiced that I was interested in 5-20 unit deals and had the funding for that in place I just got additional push back for buying the larger buildings. Eventually I just quit the program.

The third was a program on Self Storage which was highly informative and I enjoyed through AJ Osborne. If you’re interested in self storage I’d recommend looking him up.