All Forum Posts by: Ben Y.

I’ll admit I haven’t used VA’s for real estate work, but I’ve used them frequently in other projects. In general, your experience will vary tremendously depending on your budget, the tasks you are looking for help with, your ability to clearly communicate with the VA, and of course the VA themselves. For the most part, I’ve found UpWork to be a good source of diligent assistants for relatively simple research, admin, or data entry tasks that don’t require too much judgment or decision making. The VAs were often based out of south or southeast Asia, had reasonably good English skills, and were available at under $10/hr rates. For more complex work that may involve communicating or collaborating with others, then you’ll likely need a more capable assistant at a higher price. Overall, country of origin wasn’t as good of an indicator of quality as you might imagine; I’ve worked with good westerners sure, but also folks from say the Philippines that were just as good as someone from Pittsburgh. Effectively, I thought of them as a force multiplier; they’re ideal for work that isn’t hard and isn’t a good or cost-effective use of your time to handle yourself. Feel free to ask if you have more specific questions I can help answer.

Thanks @Antoine Martel, I think that's kind of what I expected. No major questions yet as I'm just getting started, but since the places I've been looking that can cashflow aren't exactly dense urban centers, I'm getting skeptical on how many deals could really be done with the same team(s) there. Given how hard it is to find good deals, I feel like it'd make more sense to cast a wider net, so to speak.

Hi all, hope everyone is having a great start to the week.

After reading a lot of posts on diversification, I'd be interested in hearing out of state / remote investors' thoughts on balancing the effort+time it takes to learn an area and build an effective team there with the desire for diversifying their investments across different regions or states.

I'm sure people have approaches all across the spectrum, but I think it'd be really insightful to learn about your experiences, both good and bad.

@Hoa Nguyen: I don't know the answer to your most recent series of questions but I'm actively following along since I'm in a similar situation as well, looking out of state from California.

From my conversations, it's hard to be competitive in MFH putting down less than 25%. I'm still debating between trying to do a 8-12 unit on my own vs. starting out passively with a syndication to learn more, but ditto in not wanting to get roped into paying some coach thousands of dollars.

@Andrew Johnson Thanks for the detailed write-up, that confirms a lot of what I was thinking regarding the cost scaling you mentioned. You bring up a lot of good points regarding forcing the appreciation, and there's the same elements of the small size ~5-7 units maybe not being bad, but still in an awkward spot. I guess it'll come down to whether I should look for something a little easier but more competitive to start with in a triplex/fourplex or dive right in with a larger unit and its costlier financing. Seems compelling why most people lean towards the former when doing their first (few) deals.

@Jeremy Taggart Thanks for your answer! If that's the case, particularly if closing costs and interest rates are less favorable, it seems like the smaller non-residential units I was talking about might be in an awkward position of being more expensive at the outset, but not of a sufficient size where there are significantly larger economies of scale to reap. All of this especially so since I'm hesitant to look at big rehab efforts on out-of-state properties.

Hi everyone,

I've been absorbing everything on BP recently and have a question regarding starting out in multi family that I wasn't able to find in my searches.

I have access to a reasonable amount of capital for investment in buy & hold rental property, and was looking to start with effectively a turnkey multi family. I'm in CA and am primarily looking in the Midwest and Southeast, which explains the interest in ready-to-go properties as I'd be using a PM anyways.

Now, because I'm looking out of state, FHA's benefits for live-in 2-4 units wouldn't be in play; as such I'm curious how to think of the differences would be in finding say a 3-4 unit property vs. something larger (but not massive) like 5-10 units. From my understanding, the biggest factors are a change in loan and pricing structure (commercial vs residential?). How substantial of a difference is this in the lower range of multi units over 4? What else is there to consider?

Thanks everyone!

Thanks Jon, and glad to hear your experience worked out pretty well. Roofstock seems like a great tool for people just starting out. Bummer they don't seem to offer any multi-unit properties. Will keep tabs on them!