All Forum Posts by: Doug N.

Follow the money! Here in SF, the (mostly) white tech workers (mostly Twitter) are displacing the (mostly) white heroin addicts in the lovely SRO hotels in the Tenderloin district. I predict a Starbucks in 18 months. Seriously.

I think it's possible to tell from local happenings long before the growth or gentrification shows up in the official tallies. Keep your ear to the ground locally - mostly online - and you can find out a lot. 

Lots of info in the local sheets (East Bay Express, SF Weekly here in the Bay Area). And in the local blogs, esp the contrarian, RE bubble and anti-growth ones.

Dr Housing Bubble is great for LA: (Real Homes of Genius: Compton Edition) - perhaps there is one of these for Houston?

Let us know what you find!

Alex, yes, by all means, keep evaluating it - the red flags are are often just barriers to entry that keep others away from the project. But the key is being able to evaluate it accurately, and quickly if possible.

For one like this, I would assume conservative numbers, pencil it, and if it works, start looking at the main issues.

If the owner has been trying to fix a problem on the property (sewer, units allowed, etc) there's more often that not a person in the local admin/planning dept that knows all about the history of the parcel, and an in-person visit is usually worth your time. You'd be surprised at what you hear sometimes. (Go when it's slow).

Failing that, try to talk to the owner at some point - or find other agents familiar with the listing.

Wish you the best, it's great practice, and kind of fun at times.

Hi Alex, 

I would look pretty squinty-eyed at this deal - it seems like it's less than ideal. 

The listing shows a few issues upfront, and zoning appears to be Lakewood MR2, possibly 4plex. Is listed as a 4plex on loopnet, but listing copy claims 5 units.

Serial price reductions in an overheated market, 350 plus days cdom, possible 4vs 5 unit zoning issues, sewer problems, etc. Assessor's value is just slightly less than listing price. 

That's just the beginning, and I would be surprised if that's all there was.

There's a story in there somewhere, and your job is to dig it out! 

Keep us posted.

cough... cloudflare... cough

@Jason Mak just finished 81 doors in Riverside; I would definitely read his post - it's informative. He gives some numbers and also hard-won insights. 

http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/223/topics/206...

Your project has a few 'tells': it's been on Loopnet for awhile, seller claims no records at all, seller clearly wants out, property has been fully bled, and more. That's not to say a Forced Appreciation Artisan™ could not make a decent go of it - it's possible, but so much more possible when you go into it with a very clear vision of what's wrong. 

Wishing you the best of luck!

This is my first post and before I continue, I'd like to thank the BP community for their extreme awesomeness. I have learned a lot in an incredibly short time - 3 weeks - and I see no end in sight for learning much more. This is possibly the best source of US REI advice on the planet, no question.

So... I was writing what was supposed to be my first post (about the blog Calculated Risk), and in the process I looked into some Seattle statistics. I went to Seattle Bubble, and then to Redfin, and what I saw was very interesting, and a bit surprising to me.

I read Tim Ellis' April post about a fellow who purchased a Fremont townhouse (Silicon Channel?) in May for $745,000. I read through the comments and saw folks talking about multiple escalation clauses, 100k+ bid-ups and the like, and it really made me think this would be a great topic for discussion. There could be many issues at play here, and I am writing a post about it in hopes of getting some diverse opinions. I'm looking at Snohomish County for MF at some point in the future. I am pretty familiar with the area, having tracked it closely from 2005-2009.

Before posting, I did a quick search on Seattle and saw Adrian Chu's response to a post about the Seattle market (great stuff, Adrian!) and I'm hoping some King/Snohomish county folks can chime in with their take on this.

This is the image that made me want to write this post:

Does it look like Seattle has the measles?