All Forum Posts by: Anthony Smith

@Moises Villalpando to simplify this post bigger pockets is famous for failed Investors pawning off their emotional investment failures as advice. Any investment is projection and math. The auto industry is in no way failing and if we didn't learn anything from 2008 the government will never allow it to. Buy low is the first part of investing. Detroit is one of if the lowest on the economic totem pole. This is the environment for buy and hold people in these areas people will rent and many will rent for the majority of their lives. Michigan is home to the largest autonomous vehicle testing facility only place for tech to expand rapidly is automotive and guess where automotive is. Also other than silicon valley ( where I grew up) Michigan has the highest influx of stem graduates at over 15% and Berkshire Hathaway has opened up real estate offices at an alarming rate and we all know who runs that. That being said my team sells more property in Detroit than anyone in the country and I would not recommend the actual city of Detroit for you first investment like any smart investor would do you should diversify your investments some high risk, some moderate and some low. Detroit is high risk hence the high ROI. The rest of the world is investing in Detroit, it's in the top 5 of any real estate places to invest and even though many on this post would have you think the rest of the world is stupid and they are the only smart ones that figured it out (after failing) it's simply not true. Ridiculous ideas like moving to areas in order to invest in them or locals don't trust you which is irrelevant, is just biased foolishness. To sum it up do your duedilligence and research start your real estate out with lower risk areas that have slightly lower returns look at cities out side of DetROIt. Warren for example has slightly less volatility and entry is around 40 to 60k ROI is around 8 to 12%. And when you get the lay of the land and you feel you have trained for the Olympics of investing find an actual expert on the area who knows rehab and management and can point out the cost of your next investment as well as the price. And lastly to all the broken hearted investors that complain about property management. News flash PM is an industry made out of conflict of interest. They make their money off of tenants not lasting and maintenance markups on turnovers. They are only rewarded when your investment is not preforming but they are a necessary evil. To avoid the above mentioned problem there are a couple things you can try. Have your real estate agent handle your leases, its in their best interest to place long term tenants that preform so you buy more through them. That removes the conflict of interest for tenant placement. Second and this is a little more difficult but use your own Maintenance crews threw the property management so when your property needs work the PM contacts guys you trust to do the bid and work through the PM then their mark ups will be transparent. For many investors this is hard as they don't have enough assets to leverage consistent work for Contractors to lower their cost yet foolishly still try to get a discount and wonder why they get subpar work or even ripped off. I leave you with that for now I could go on and on as my job is to bail out some of these failed Investors and give them a reality check on where they went wrong, then show them how to turn their under preforming assets into preforming ones. Always remember you can't spell DetROIt with out ROI

@Moises Villalpando the thing in Detroit is you have to research your real estate agent more than your investment. Bad guidance is what gets most investors in Detroit. Think of it as a 401K they all work the same. It's all about who is managing that 401k that makes it successful or not. Most investments work the same. Cost + price + volatility. Find someone who can accurately present that to you and can present their own track record of successfully managing that for other investors and you will be ok. Dont let the failed attempts of others scare you away from the most invested in City in the country at this time. All that being said investments have risk but the right knowledge and help can prepare you for that and even loweryourlevel of risk.

I work primarily in the Detroit metro area and you can get amazing deals in the surrounding suburbs Roseville, Eastpointe and Warren. You can still get in between 40k to 60k and get returns from 9% to %12. As for Detroit though its like any other fire sale many people investing get fooled by the people. Just because you know price and area doesn't mean you know the actual cost If you don't have an agent that can estimate rehab and turn around time then you will get burned. Also there are other areas in the country to invest but the news stories don't lie they are not going to give you 15% to 20% ROI you can still find steals in Detroit almost in the 30% ROI range. Just think if your 401K is not preforming that doesn't mean 401K's are a bad investment strategy Its because who you have handling your 401K has a bad investment strategy even if that someone is you. You can't spell Detroit without ROI try it lol

I work primarily in the Detroit metro area and you can get amazing deals in the surrounding suburbs Roseville, Eastpointe and Warren. You can still get in between 40k to 60k and get returns from 9% to %12. As for Detroit though its like any other fire sale many people investing get fooled by the people just because you know price and area doesn't mean you know the actual cost If you don't have an agent that can estimate rehab and turn around time then you will get burned. Also there are other areas in the country to invest but the news stories don't lie they are not going to give you 15% to 20% ROI you can still find steals in Detroit almost in the 30% ROI range. Just think if your 401K is not preforming that doesn't mean 401K's are a bad investment strategy Its because who you have handling your 401K has a bad investment strategy even if that someone is you. You can't spell Detroit without ROI try it lol

@Brandon Rush Find an agent in Detroit They should be able to help you out for free Considering their main objective is to build relationships with people who buy and sell property Any good agent would trade information and knowledge for a fruitful relationship And you won't find any better information considering some of the top agents in the city have done Hundreds if not thousands of deals And if seen all the pitfalls of buying property in Detroit that's not something That can be learned from a book or a seminar

It boils down to this would you rather be the agent that has proof that you have tried advancing your knowledge beyond a basic real estate license? Showing that you constantly strive to go above and beyond most agents, investing your own time and money to learn to better serve others? Or just be like everyone else is the sea of head shots and catchy tag lines like "#1" or "specialist" ect. I look at it like a college degree even if you don't apply to your field of study you will still have a leg up majority of the time in all fields against those who have no proof of continued education. So you can debate rather the curriculum is worth the time and money. But the acronyms are worth it when Marketing yourself. I pay more for "specialized leads" for 30 days that generate nothing, then the cost of a two day class.

Yeah all those comps you pulled from the MLS are more than double the square footage. This house is only 1300 sqft and does the tenant pay a portion because I have hundreds of section 8 tenants and I have never seen a voucher amount given for $1500 (1250 rent and 250 utilities) for a 3 bed 1 bath especially in Detroit. What bank did this evaluation????

what's the square footage on those comps you pulled from the MLS. the only thing I see that even gets close to 100k In that area is almost double the sqft of the property your selling. I am interested but I sell a lot of property in this area and I am just not seeing how to break 100k on this one especially south of Santa Clara St. You can go on any website and see the difference In price between north or south of Santa Clara st.

replace with laminate planking waterproof kind

@Joshua B. Understood my good friend My comment was more towards someone else comment and not towards the thread as a whole. @Jenifer Levini is from CA which is a huge state that I am from originally as you can see from her comment she lives in San Francisco and is surrounded by tech companies some of which are an hour plus away. So, to those outside of Michigan the largest autonomous tech facility being 45 min away from the original automobile manufacturing plants they are practically sharing a parking lot. None the less I was referring to the several out of state investors that think Michigan (not just Detroit) Is waiting to be discovered by new tech and we already have.