All Forum Posts by: Ganesh S.

Great advice Jackie! Passive income is the best way to get out of the rat race :)

Given your business background and availability of capital - I highly recommend only investing in commercial real estate. Given your wife has some experience in finding hospital based real estate that may help a bit, though depends on the type of CRE - retail, office, etc. I am biased towards Retail because thats the only area I own right now.

Commercial real estate has not yet gone through a boom as residential real estate as of now, so you will be able to find good deals. There are a few CRE experts like @Joel owens in BP who would be able to add more advice to your specific requirements.

Good Luck!

@John Rooster - I found the preliminary injunction online after the advice from the group to search for documents. Was just giving a quick update, not trying to leave anything out :)

It seems the attorney has "mishandled entrusted funds" but also indicates "he desires to cooperate with the bar". And he is to provide periodic update on all the trust account reconciliation reports, but is not allowed to withdraw any funds from the trust account until further notice from bar. He keeps saying our funds would be released once the Judge unfreezes the account and he is sorry we got involved in this. But looks like he was doing some fraudulent activity with the trust account.

I've left a voicemail to the state bar and would be following up with them this week. Will let you how it goes.

Thanks everyone! Now I wished I posted this earlier :-)

I have located the preliminary injunction and have left voicemails to couple of offices in the bar.

Thanks again

@John Chapman, @Pat L. Thanks for your replies and I appreciate it.

BTW this person is a partner in the law firm. And when we got suspicious we asked another partner if this is legit and he emailed us saying its good and we have this email saved for our records.

What would be an effective way to move forward. Should I threaten the two partners that I feel that this is fraud and I am going to inform the Judge/bar if they dont pay up within a week? I am sure their reputation would mean something if the partner itself is involved in this. I was thinking of telling them I would post a review in Yelp and other websites indicating their action, but that may complicate things by them suing me :) So not so sure. What is the leverage that I have to make them pay up? Reporting them to the bar on unethical practices?

Thanks for your help!

@Jack Bobeck & @Stephanie Dupuis Thanks a lot for your inputs!

Didn't occur to me to call the Judge or the bar association :-) I will do both and see what I learn regarding why the account has been frozen as well as if this qualifies as a complaint to the bar.

Thanks again!

Hi folks,

We had a tenant who was back on his rent during the 2009-2011 economic downturn. We had them evicted, with a payment plan for rent owed. To cut a long story short, our attorney (to our surprise) personally guaranteed a large payment of 15K from the tenants in order for us to agree to the payment plan. We were suspicious as to why our attorney is taking the responsibility of the personal guarantee instead of letting the evicted tenant to own all the liabilities. Ofcourse we did agree to the payment plan and the end payment of 15K *because* the attorney assumed personal guarantee for that payment. We had suspicions that he may be cutting a different deal with the evicted tenant in the background, but could not prove it.

Now as per the attorney he did receive the 15K payment from the evicted tenant into his trust account, but the trust account has been frozen by a judge due to unspecified reasons. We have asked him for the exact reasons and communications that he has had to the judge to unfreeze the account, he has not been forthcoming. Its been more than 8 months of back and forth with no progress.

What would be your suggestions to move forward

- Since the attorney has personally guaranteed the 15K, should we file in small claims (we are two partners , so may be as can do 7.5K each)

- Is this even ethical for the attorney to do? Should we file something to the bar?

- Is there any way we can garnish his wage to get back the money he owes us?

Appreciate your help!

At this moment I am not actively looking for any deals out in Charlotte, but I know there were good deals to be found (few months ago) in commercial real estate in Charlotte, if you are interested in buying retail strip centers etc.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

Hi Folks

I am fairly comfortable with commercial NNN real estate (In US) , as well as land development (primarily in India). However I have come across a new opportunity in southern Indian state with a beach front land right next to a popular beach resort. The neighboring resort is doing extremely good business and most are foreign/expat tourists that stay there.

We (partners) bought this beach front land, with the idea that we would construct a beach resort. My partners have significant experience in building residential houses but not beach resort, so construction wise we may not have much of a problem. Environment and other approvals would also be mostly be possible, though may take some time.

The challenge we are facing now is a very open ended question of how to approach building a beach resort. We have a a little less than 5 Acres and we are not allowed to construct high raise buildings. I will list down some of the random thoughts that I have, please provide any comments/suggestions.

1. Since we don't have experience running beach resorts, one option is to build the resort and lease out the management as well as Restaurant to tenants and collect rent. We primarily need to reach out to existing resort operators and see if they are interested. I was thinking of reaching out to operators like RCI and proceed from there. Anyone has some suggestions for this?

2. Build the resort, operate the resort part of it, but lease out the restaurant space. But Food and beverages would be one of the primary profit centers, so not sure if this is a good idea, unless we get pretty good lease rates.

3. Build/operate the resort/restaurants with help from partners. This is a long shot, but one of them does have a background in restaurant business, so we would think about this as well.

4. If we decide to build & operate the resort ourselves, we may have space to build upto 30-40 rooms with ample space for swimming pool, restaurant, parking, event hall. But would you start out small with 10-20 rooms with rest of the facilities and then build another phase for additional rooms? or build all of it together?

5. How should we go about analyzing opex of such a property? Obviously it is in India and things would be different, but lots of times things are same as well - for e.g. Food & beverages is a big money maker is what I hear in both places.

6. Neighboring resort has > 70% occupancy all the time and we know their total revenues, but dont know the exact net income after all operational expenditures. Not sure if there is a general rule here. We may have to get friendly with some of their management staff ;-)

Any other ideas? Showstoppers to watch out for?

Ranjit Grewal - welcome to BP! Its a great place to learn/share all things related to Real estate.

I am myself a US citizen, but currently living in Bangalore. I have real estate (residential/commercial) investments in US, which have been doing pretty well. In India we do land development in Chennai and looking to venture into commercial real estate as well.

It would be great if you can share some of your real estate experience both in India/US.

GS