All Forum Posts by: Anton Ivanov

@Jamie Henkin

Absolute yes on the inspection - no matter how good you know the turnkey company, how many properties you bought from them in the past and how much you trust them, I would ALWAYS order a professional inspection.

Even more so, I would not go with the property inspector recommended by the turnkey company to avoid any potential conflict of interest.

The turnkey company may have missed problems during the rehab, they may have cut corners on other things and just ignored more things. There is no way for you to know unless you order an inspection. It will give you a good base line of the property condition when you purchase.

@Thomas Manning

Adding to what Bram suggested above, you may want to go through the Ultimate Beginner's Guide here on BP (link). It's really good for giving you an overview of how different real estate investing approaches work and at least expose you to some of the concepts you will need to learn along the way.

If you're looking for a local mentor, I suggest you check out some of the real estate investor meetups around your hometown.

@Jenny Gremillion

I haven't personally seen an early payoff mortgage calculator for multiple loans, but there may be some out there online. This site doesn't have exactly one quite like that.

But out of curiosity, why are you guys planning to pay off all 10 homes instead of buying more after that number?

@Brandon Schlichter

I recently published a post here on the forums that went over exactly what you described - many turnkey companies (maybe even most?) inflate their cash flow projections by understating vacancies, expenses and maintenance and overstating price appreciation and rental income increase.

That's why I always advocate you run your own numbers and not go by what is listed on the seller's website. 

With that being said, I think you can find good turnkey deals, but not all of them will be that.

@Chris Mason

Thanks, I'm glad you like it!

@Clayton Mobley

I agree with pretty much everything you say and you're 100% correct - there are very well established turnkey companies out there who are reaslitic with their numbers and don't try to win business by padding their cash flow.

But at the same time, I wouldn't say that the ones who do inflate their numbers are necessarily new companies. I've seen some very well established ones do this routinely for years and people still seem to trust them.

@Curt Davis

I'm not familiar with every state's property tax laws, so I can see how #3 may not be as critical in some areas. I listed it so people are aware of two things. 

First, is that without checking the tax records, you have no way of knowing when the home was last appraised for and for how much. It could have been owned by the same person for 10 years before the turnkey company bought it and its assessment may be out of date.

Second, if the home was owner-occupied before the turnkey company bought it, which is often the case, many counties that I've come across offer some type of property tax reduction based on that. As an investor, you will not longer receive it.

@Jennifer McElliott

I think #1 will be your biggest obstacle - the fact that you are not familiar with the area and also that you don't have a team in place to help you find, rehab and manage the properties, as opposed to your existing contact where you live.

I think there is nothing wrong with looking at AL once you move there for opportunities, but you have the WA market to always fall back to since you know it well. You can, for example, continue looking in WA until you move and maybe for the first few months thereafter until you're familiar with the local AL market and have built up some local contacts to make that first purchase.

@Vincent Hawkes

Like Mark pointed out above, you can always find good deals (in other words cash flowing properties) in SFR or multi-family markets, turnkeys or otherwise. Real estate in the US has definitely rebounded since the crash, but if you have a good team, you can still find great deals.

Another strategy that I've seen people be very successful with is to keep their flips as rentals. You have tremendous experience in your market with finding and rehabbing properties, while minimizing your costs. Keeping your flips as rentals instead of selling them would allow you to build your rental portfolio rather quickly since you already must have existing acquisition channels and the rehab teams.

Just another suggestion as opposed to trying something you're not experienced with.

Thanks for everyone who PM'd me - I'm all out of free Pro upgrades!

But if you still want an awesome mobile real estate calculator to analyze rental properties, turnkey properties, rehabs and flips - download DealCheck mobile app free for iOS or Android today:

iOS: http://bit.ly/dealcheck-ios

Android: http://bit.ly/dealcheck-android

@Jim Horne

Great goal, I wish you the best of luck!

My biggest piece of wisdom for you is to start taking action, however small, as soon as possible. It's easy to just keep reading or attending seminars without really doing anything with the information you learn. There are some members on here who I'm sure know most everything they need to buy their first rental, but have not taken that step.

Learn the basics and then start investing. You will learn more from purchasing and renting out your first property that you will from all of the books you can ever read, that I can guarantee you.

@Aaron Mazzrillo

I wouldn't necessarily call them lies because a lot of the assumptions are hard to quantify and difference investors like to use different numbers based on their preferences or experience. For example, I'm usually very conservative with my maintenance, so I may use 10-15% or gross rent for each house. Somebody else may look at that and say that's way too much and something like 8% is more realistic.

I do agree with you that most of the turnkey sellers have seen enough properties in their markets, so they know what numbers will be more accurate, but don't usually use them on their websites.