All Forum Posts by: Andrew Freed

@Mark Brennan - This may seem like an obvious answer but why not buy a new fringe? Honestly, you can get a new fridge or even a used one for less than $500. In addition, you'll need it for the new tenant anyway once she moves out. If you really want to save the current fridge, you can always store it and when the tech is available, have him check it out, fix it and utilize it on another property. 

At the end of the day, if you want your tenants to treat your place right and pay on time, you have to offer a certain level of customer service. Someone going without a fridge for a week is a huge hassle and the fact that you can not address it quicker definitely affects how your tenant views the property and you, which could result in worse consequences such as non-payment, late payment, or not taking care of the property. Treat people how you would want to be treated and the universe will return the favor. 

@Richard Clark - Well wholesalers require POF so you don't waste their time. How many investors waste wholesalers and real estate agents time putting in low ball offers and shopping around... too many. What you can do is provide a letter of commitment from a hard money lender showing them that you or your buyer has funding available to close. The hard money lenders will require POF far lower than the wholesaler, e.g. sometimes as low as 10% down of the purchase + repairs. This is something that your buyers list should be able to provide. If they are serious about closing, they will go through the work of getting you this documentation.

@Alex Cutler - @Dan H. could not be more right in his analysis. What I will say is everyone trashes the expensive markets. They claim they are unaffordable, provide no cash flow, too tenant friendly, however true wealth is real estate is built through mortgage paydown, the tax benefits, and appreciation. Cash flow is pennies on the dollar compared to the cost of the asset, it is more of a defensive measure to ensure you have liquid assets to maintain the property. 

Either way, I'm all for house hacking highly appreciating markets. You can most likely live for free or live for half of what it would cost for rent all while your tenants are paying down your mortgage, you are getting fat tax returns, and you have an asset that appreciates dramatically, especially when levered. For instance, I own 1.5 mil of real estate in higher appreciating markets. If the market appreciates 10% in 2 years, that's $150K added to my networth. Yeah, its in the property and not liquid, but I can access it via lines of credit and refinancing. I personally would love to house hack in the San Diego market, its a great place to live and has long term appreciation likelihood. 

@Javier Rosales - The key is to get the max liability insurance possible on your home owners insurance policy (I do a mil) and also get an umbrella policy if you feel the mil is not satisfactory. At the end of the day, people claim LLCs are the best way to protect your property, however if you are not business savvy and manage the LLC in the proper manner, it is super easy for lawyers to "piece the corporate vail" meaning they remove the LLC protection and can go after your personal assets. Personally, I have my properties in my name and have very large liability protections.

@Moly Yang - Not at all, I think you just need to run some numbers to ensure the house is profitable. Every city has landlords, the question is whether this deal makes sense from a rental perspective. You can utilize rentometer, BPinsight, craiglist and facebook marketplace to get a gauge for rent, put it into the BP calculator along with maintenance, capex, vacancy, and property management (b/c the ultimate goal is for this to be a passive investment) and see if its profitable. If it provides minimal profit, it might make more sense to leverage the equity into another deal. At the end of the day, I am a buy and hold investor so I am all for accumulating as much properties as possible as long as they are profitable otherwise you will be supporting that property out of your own pocket every month, which limits your growth dramatically. 

@Evan Stamps - Absolutely, the inspection contingency is a general term however a contractor walk through can qualify as an inspection. Let them know that you had a contractor inspect the property, found clear issues that make this deal not make sense at the current price, and request major concessions or walk away. The house definitely has a right buy number so what's wrong in asking them for a huge reduction? If they say yes, great! If they say no, you were planning on walking away anyway.

@Charles Carillo - I appreciate the insight. Yes, I owe $1,187,879 debt on my properties and have $1,565,257 equity in all 4 of my properties. One of which is a syndication where I put in $65K hence that equity in inaccessible. Unfortunately if I take equity out of my any of my deals, I'd probably be below the 20% threshold for my properties. I did attempt to refinance out of my current househack / FHA loan last month (so I could househack again) however the appraisal came in way too low for it to make any sense. I did use the same lender which hired the same appraiser for my initial purchase so that could have been the issue.

Yes, I am currently looking for solid deals in my area and plan on reaching out to a few contacts that have asked me to reach out to them if I run across any deals. I'm looking for a BRRRR or flip SFH or possibly a BRRRR multi in my area. Have any suggestions for finding partners? I do host a local RE meetup.

@Matt "Roar" Gardner Wow, awesome work. I actually just started hosting a local meetup (I'm 3 meetings in) so I would love to learn more about how you leverage that resource. Is it okay if I DM you and pick your brain further on your strategies? 

Hi BP Community. I'm feeling a little stuck.... In late 2020, early 2021, I opened a HELOC on my primary residence and purchased 3 more properties for a total of 8 rental units. Everything is going great and the properties are performing well, however I am out of my own funds and feeling like I am not making the daily progress I am used to. I'm currently working on stabilizing the properties and paying down my HELOC which I plan on using to purchase more deals but its a slow process. Does anyone have advice on how I might accelerate my growth? Has anyone ran across this issue, what did you do?

@Matt "Roar" Gardner - Let's go!!! Great work. I am in the situation where I have run out of my own funds however I have private money that wants to partner with me so you gave me some solid ideas on how to split the equity. Have any recommendations on books to read or resources that offer options on how to provide an equity split with partners and/or borrowing debt and keeping all the equity for yourself?