All Forum Posts by: Brett Coryell

I just got a quote today for my first REI purchase. It's an 8-unit on the southeast side of Chicago valued at $525k. The finished area is 7600 sf and there is another 5000 sf of unfinished basement area. The policy came in at $4124.

I let the broker pick what he thought was reasonable as a starting point and it looks like $2M in General Aggregate, 2M in Products and Completed Operations, $1M each occurrence, $1M personal and advertising injury, $500k damage to rented premises, $10k medical expenses, a line that says $1.11M as the limit on the building, 80% co-insurance, $5k wind deductible, $5k AOP deductible, and a property enhancement endorsement.

Clearly I need to have him walk me through this, but are there any good self-study resources AND any good rules of thumb I could apply to see whether this is reasonable?  Just seeing that the insurable value of my $525k building is $1.11M is an eye-opener.  

Thanks,

Brett

@Chris Chesser, first off hello from a fellow resident of Sycamore! Full disclaimer, I am a vice president at NIU. I’ve moved around quite a bit though, chasing interesting work wherever it took me. I’ve worked for three different universities (hello to all the Purdue and Emory grads out there too) so I believe my comments are balanced and reflective of my own life experience. I’m not just shilling for the home team.

Another disclaimer, I'm just getting into REI and expect to close on my first deal (8 unit multifamily in Chicago) at the end of September. I'm speaking not as a real estate expert but more as someone who has run lines of business with hundreds of employees and budgets up to and past the $50M/yr range.

A college degree can give you lots of things that are worthwhile:

• Chances. Many jobs simply require a college degree (of any type) and if you don’t have one, you can’t even get past the HR department.  You'll have more options when you pick your next job if you have a degree.  The stats say you'll have many different jobs, even if you love real estate investing.  Why not give yourself every chance?

• Advancement. It’s not just being hired by a company, but even within a company some (or many) promotional paths will be closed to you without a degree.

• Habits. Going to college can help you strengthen and lock in habits that successful people use in all fields, including REI. These include becoming a lifelong learner, being organized, communicating well, and so much more.

• Enjoyment. Done right, a good university experience can open your eyes to new ideas and new ways of thinking that can and should enrich your daily life.

You can learn all the finance, accounting, contracting, and whatnot you need to become a very rich man without going to college. YouTube, bookstores, the library, BiggerPockets, and online courses through Udacity or Coursera are all there for you. It’s never been easier to skip college and still become educated. All that said, getting a degree still has advantages and gives you the best shot at a larger world. (Oh, and more money if you like.)

College at an 80% discount? Yeah, then double my enthusiasm for that plan. Do note, however, that most people don’t go to college full time while also working full time. You’re more likely to take only one or two classes per semester. It’ll take you longer, but it’s an easier road.

@Mindy Jensen, quick shout out to you and your husband. “Go Huskies!”  Love you on the podcasts!

I'll agree that NIU is not ranked as a top 100 university.  However, one thing NIU does very well is to help improve a person's economic status through education. 

I encourage everyone to check out the Social Mobility Index by CollegeNet. This index redefines what what makes a college prestigious away from the Ivy Leagues, unaffordable by most, and toward those universities that education possible for people who make average salaries.  NIU is in the top 70 nationwide by this measure and higher ranked than almost every other university in Illinois, including Northwestern. 

This may well be the exact perspective the OP should be taking on college.

I'm very new to real estate but I'm in IT as my career field so I feel I can give some sound advice.  When we talk about allowing secure transmission of a document, there really is a sense in which the recipient has to be part of the discussion.  

I've seen lots of scenarios where the correct and safe transmission of a document, either paper or electronic, is followed by exposing that document to people who shouldn't see it because on the recipient's end it gets printed out, lost, left in a cab, saved in unencrypted form, forwarded to their personal Gmail account, and too many other examples to mention.

If you're sending to a bank or other corporate entity, their IT department may have an idea of how they expect to receive and store sensitive documents.  Apart from that, we just have to choose a level of risk we can accept.

As an IT person, I would tell you that for routine small business needs, sharing files as a link to a cloud drive (ShareFile, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or OneDrive) is probably fine.  Just watch out for your sharing permissions.  Set up a folder for each deal you do and only share that folder with the specific person you need to.

If you want to send secure email, you again have to trust that the person on the other end isn't letting their eight year old install malware on their business laptop (true story) so that it gets infected and all your files get shared with hackers in another country.  But assuming you can't know that, then the security of the email you send depends entirely on the email system that your recipient is using.  

If you want to receive and store email securely, I would never use Yahoo.  Their security practices are atrocious and have been in the news in the last year.  Gmail is okay if you don't want legal assurances.  Microsoft's Office365 (buy business license, not a personal one) will give you more assurances in writing.  Also, pro tip:  use only the web client and never download the email or attachments into Outlook or any other mail app running on your desktop or laptop computer.

Finally if you want to send encrypted email then I recommend a product called Virtru.  It's not free but it's dead simple to use.  You can send encrypted email safely to people who are not using a secure email system because Virtru acts as a middle man and forces you to view the encrypted email on their server instead of passing it on to your insecure recipient.  And, as my favorite feature, you can revoke someone's ability to view that email at any time or after a predetermined period of time.

Sorry it's long, but I hope that helps.

Brett