All Forum Posts by: Anthony Burroff

I bought my XT-6000 about 10 years ago, and they were the best on the market then, it still works well today. Works efficiently for a moderately sized house, but I recomend only doing one room at a time. 

Those ozone20000 machines look promising and actually appear to have a lot more bang for your buck as far as ozone output . Technology has improved since then.  The important part is the ozone mg/hr output. Most of the ozone generators available for less than 300 bucks do not put out sufficient ozone to "Shock treat" a room. They're designed to simply clean the air, remember ozone has a half life of 30 minutes, and breaks down immedietly upon contact with organic matter. A low output generatorator will not get a large room to sufficiently high enough ozone concentration to kill mold and smoke odors at the source.

Howdy Folks,

Thanks for the generous response to this thread. I apologies for the delay in my response! I was busy with work, & life then I had to run off on a family vacation reunion. 

Lots of great encouraging information here, and certainly some things to think about. That is something I really like about this forum people are quite encouraging. If I mention commercial real estate to people in the real world all they see is the barriers to entry. Here you folks see the big picture!

Thanks about the SBA loan information. @Damon Pendleton I would be glad to have a reference to a good broker thank you!

@Joel Owens & Bob Floss You bring up excellent points on doing a rent vs own analysis and making sure I don't compromise my business finances by making the purchase. Its clear that a large down payment could severely limit my expansion efforts and put my business at risk by having less liquid capital available for the expansion and unexpected expenses. Doing so without educating myself and proper financial planning could actually slow the growth of my business or even spell the death of it without proper consideration to all the facts. 

I will never forget when one of my attorneys told me the number one cause of business failure is growing too fast. I didn't heed his warning carefully enough, and I lost one of my first businesses because I tried to expand too quickly. I put too much investment into the initial expansion into the new location, hired on too big of a team too quickly and more or less was overconfident and didn't prepare for all of the unexpected costs. It was a very costly painful but valuable lesson I certainly do not wish to repeat. 

This is going to require some careful thought and planning. An idea that comes to mind is that my business would actually do just as well to have multiple smaller locations as it would to have one larger location. It would be wise to keep the current location keep the revenue intact and postage stamp out multiple locations each with the plan of buying a building where I could occupy over 50% of the space.  Keeping the same business structure and size at each location. I know from experience management of the location gets more complicated when you put more eggs into one basket.

@Bob Langworthy Thanks for reminding me to vacuum the truck. I loved that podcast. I'm going to go listen to it again. Its encouraging to hear this idea is working out well for you. 

Regards,

Anthony

Been doing a lot of reading about house hacking and using the BRRRR but I already like the house I live in and don't want to uproot my family (I wish I'd read more on it before we bought the house we're living in right now, oops....) and then it occurred to me that because I own a business I should do commercial real estate hacking.

The more I think about it the more it blows my mind about the probably half million of business revenue I've thrown at renting various commercial spaces over the last decade. Not to mention hundreds of thousands in building infrastructure upgrades into a commercial building that wasn't mine! Ouch... That could all be equity in my company instead of lost revenue.

Throw in the potential for buying extra space and leasing it out to other businesses to create extra cashflow.  Seems like an obvious route to me.  The possibility of using my businesses financials as well to help qualify for the loans... Etc. Add that to the fact that my business right now has outgrown my current space and our biggest limiting factor is lack of space. We could easily triple our gross revenue in a year if we had triple the space, and we would own the building. I could probably even raise some venture capital for the down-payment. 

The biggest issue is I've never done any real estate deals before and I get the feeling its not going to be an easy path to start out on. But hey, the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

Basically my question is has anyone done this before? Anyone in commercial real estate have any pointers, books, ideas to send me in the right direction? You don't need to say I'm totally crazy to try and skip small multifamily properties and focus energy on commercial real estate... I already know that part.

There's no question I'm going to make this dream a reality. I just need to figure out the how.

I've been using my Air Zone ozone generator for years, reliable and are the best I've found. Having tried several brands I highly recommend their XT series. They arnt cheap, but they will tackle weird smells, mold and smoke like nobody's business Just don't breathe the stuff. They have a sizing chart on their website depending on how big your project is. Bigger is always better.  air-zone dot com

Having just closed down one of my business locations, I was forced to get rid of a LOT of stuff. A 3400 square foot warehouse full of stuff to be exact.  You really have to let go of your attachment to junk, even useful or seemingly valuable items or equipment. Are you gonna use it anytime soon in the near future?  More importantly even if you are going to use it a year down the road is it even worth the cost of your time and the cost of storage space? Is it even worth trying to sell?

 Lets say your time is worth 100$ an hour and your paying $1.00 square foot to store that stuff. Is it really worth spending an hour of your time to sell that piece of equipment with a resale value of 75$ or furniture that takes up 8 square feet and sits around on craigslist for 3 months before it sells? What about that box full of items worth 10 bucks each that will take hours to sell on ebay or craigslist and you'll only use a few of them "someday". 

Once you run the numbers it becomes a lot easier to just load it all into a truck and take it to donate or to the recycling center/dump. 

I'm still a newbie to REI but having quit my job more than a decade ago, starting multiple businesses and becoming an employer, I'd say I'm qualified to answer this question -- I'd say the single most important trait is to have a powerful and passionate vision. A vision that's so strong that nothing can stop you from achieving your goals and inspiring your team in spite of all the odds and challenges that come at you. A vision that excites you so much the work seems effortless and enjoyable, success becomes inevitable.

I took their 3 day course; and as a newbie I thought the 3 days was great information. I was expecting to get sold on whatever their expensive program was so I came prepared to resist their marketing tactics.  They were quite skillful in trying to rope you into their expensive mastery program.  Admittedly I was quite tempted. They even contacted me afterwords and offered me several "pay as you go" and cheaper options. But the more I talked to them the more I felt they were selling a glamourous idea and the information really is all out there for free on this forum and written in books. 

I do know a fellow who took their course and had huge success with it, I also read about folks feeling rather ripped off by their course. Bottom line is its not a fast track to get started, you still have to put in all the work and you'll be 30k in the hole getting started. There is no magic bullet for this business, or any other for that matter. 

After all the research I came to the conclusion, buy some books, listen to some podcasts, look for someone to partner up with who's been doing it awhile. You could even pay a couple hundred an hour as you go for a business coach and probably be better off. There are lots of better options. So far I'm dozens of podcasts and several books deep and feeling confident I'll get the ball rolling on my own. 

Just my 2cents. Good Luck!

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek  -  great in depth book on developing your leadership skills

I just finished reading "If you can't wholesale after this I've got nothing for you" By Todd Fleming 

It was cheap on amazon, a pretty easy to read step by step guide with lots of actionable steps.  

Hello BiggerPockets!

Allow me to introduce myself, I am Anthony. I'm 32 years old, I reside in Eugene, Oregon. New here on the forums and just getting started educating myself on how I'm going to build my own real estate empire. I've listened to a few dozen podcasts so far, gotten myself pretty deep into a nice stack of books, and am feeling more confident every day about building my new business. My goals are to start with some fix and flip rehabs, possibly wholesales and leverage my way into multifamily and eventually commercial buy & hold properties.

I'm no stranger to building businesses and in fact have only gotten a regular paycheck for about a year when I was 16. I have owned a few different companies, mostly in the tech industry. I never liked the term "serial entrepreneur" but I'm starting to fit the bill. I understand the emotional strains of running a business. I am pretty good at leading a team, or at least I'd like to think so, learning about leadership is a never ending hobby of mine. The failures can be hard lessons, but often what leads to the sweet successes that make it all worth it. My most recent business success was building a certified child care center, which was inspired by my 3 year old daughter.  It was my proverbial "light at the end of the tunnel" in building a true systems based business right from the start. It may only make a modest profit but it requires very little of my time, is a great place for my daughter to learn and grow, and provides a great benefit for our community. 

In any case. I have also had my fair share of failures. I have decided to close down my tech business, as profits were once again dwindling and it either needed to die or be reinvented again. (As what happens frequently thanks to the rapid changes in technology) bottom line the industry was no longer fulfilling me and I had no desire to rekindle that flame. So here I am to pursue real estate full time...

I've already set my first 90 day deadline. To acquire funding, close on a house, and get a team together to start rehabbing it before the end of September. 

I want to have that house sold and be purchasing another one before 2019. My clock is ticking...

Looking forward to getting to know all of you!