All Forum Posts by: Brian Davis

Hello All,

I am a licensed Private Investigator and I know I have seen posts and concerns in the past about looking into potential real estate properties or having troublesome tenants, etc.  I just wanted to get a general consensus on what the biggest needs for a PI would be in the BiggerPockets world.  I would like to know if there is a big need for my type of service and also if anyone has something small or simple to work on, if it's not a big expense from my pocket, I'd potentially be willing to help out just so I can get more feedback!  Please send me a private message on here if that is the case.

Hello,

I wanted to know if anyone had any recommendations or smart way to use money in my 401k now. I am 37 years old and not as excited to wait on money sitting in my company 401k plan. Currently there is about 50k (IRA, already paid taxes on it) in it and I feel that I am wasting the opportunity of that money by having it just sit there and am interested in somehow finding a way to use it for a vacation rental home.

I was trying to learn a little about converting this into a Self directed Roth IRA but as I'm learning more that basically I couldn't use this in the way that I would intend, which is really just using the vacation rental property as passive income. Are there any other types of strategies or things I can do with this 401k plan in relations to investing in a vacation rental property?

 Yea, I think in Delaware you may be luckier than most other places, especially since that is the smallest state.  However as you can imagine with over 3,000 counties in the US all counties have their own process and way of collecting and organizing cases and data.  Many do not report to a main court and it is a much more complicated process in obtaining and searching records.  That is something my company has also been focusing on for some of our more high end clients.   They want to know EVERYTHING, so we have been spending more time searching many smaller municipal, family courts, etc. on top of the main county level criminal and civil courts.  

 Thanks Aaron, yes I would love to hear from some other's that may know more into this.  As part of a background screening and we also do reference checks and in this case it would obviously be previous tenants so I feel that is necessary as well.  My points were really geared more towards civil and social media.  Looks like we will wait for more info on civil, but even social media I do not believe is done correctly.  Obviously anyone can scour the internet to find anything to the best of their ability, but I would say that most people are not professional social media reviewers.  Again, my company has a team of social media analysts that do only social media searching for a living.  This is a combination of using proprietary AI methods and algorithms to search in conjunction with manual searching via internet and social media platforms, which can take upwards of 20+ hours.  Those long hour instances are more extreme; however when dealing with your investment and saving yourself thousands of dollars in the future, some may find it necessary as a one time thing.  Because I do this for a living, I am much  more curious to see what others takes on all of this is because I am realizing that most investors here are not doing as adequate diligence in vetting as I was originally expecting.  Vetting at a high level doesn't seem like a big deal until something goes wrong...

 Thanks Richard, but I think the point is you want to be fully diligent and there is still tons of things that can be missed.  The only way a domestic violence issue will show up is if it turned into a police report where actual police are involved.  If I just claim someone did something to me and filed in court that would stay in the civil courts.  You can also learn alot about someone if they are constantly suing different people, again only found in the civil courts.  Basically, what I am trying to point out is that there is so much that can be missed by not running civil court searches, yet it doesn't seem to be a standard method of doing background screening on tenants.  I just can not figure out why this is not a bigger concern at all in the community...

Hello,

I am newer to biggerpockets and still looking to do my first investment.  Rates are just so high right now that it is making it difficult to pull the trigger on anything.  I actually do background screening and investigations for a living and was curious of the process for most landlords.  I am noticing that most people are just doing criminal, eviction records and credit checks.  

Again, having knowledge of doing background screening for a living I am trying to figure out why most landlords are not doing Civil records searches?  Does anybody know why these are not standard on tenant screening?  Eviction records would likely show up in any civil records searches, but would give so much more information on tenants.  For example if you ran a civil search you may discover the applicant may have a restraining order against them or are be involved in multiple civil lawsuits, domestic issues, or being sued for anything else.  Most of this stuff will never show up in the criminal courts because with civil, those are "person vs person" and technically anybody can claim anything against anybody even frivolous lawsuits that would not show up in criminal.  With that said, as a landlord I feel that would be extremely important to know if someone has been sued by 3 or 4 different people for not paying them or having domestic issues.  

Maybe someone with more experience here can explain why I do not see civil screening as part of the regular process.  Lastly, my company also does social media screening.  Wouldn't this be important to run as well?  I would really like to learn why these are not standard.

Thank you!

 Thank you Bonnie, yes I would like to learn more about this cost segregation and being able to count something towards my regular w2.  Unfortunately,  I really don't have an understanding of how this can work at the moment.

Hello,

I wanted to try to fully understand what the tax benefits are for someone who is looking to get into STR investing and trying to navigate tax benefits.

Basically my family has a small business that I am part owner in as I split with my brother and father.  Currently we have a CPA who handles all of our business taxes and also handles all of our personal family taxes.  I work pretty much 9-5 but my taxes are filed as 1040 self employed and every quarter I have to pay estimated taxes to both my state and the IRS.

Once I decide to get my first STR I am highly considering finding a separate CPA that specializes in the short term rental taxes. I am hoping I can potentially find someone on here. I live in CT but don't believe I need a cpa that lives in my state and they can be from anywhere, would that be correct?

I really wanted to see if anybody could try to explain in laymen’s terms what my tax benefits would be outside of depreciation and mortgage interests.  Most people I have been reading up on are W2 employees so their benefits may be way different than mine since none of my taxes are being deducted from my paycheck and I’m just paying estimated taxes.  Can I somehow intertwine and mix my taxes much easier since I’m self employed?

Thanks in advance!

Hello,

I wanted to see if this was the best place to get assistance on how to start getting into short term rental property investments.

Basically, my family and I live in CT near New Haven, but every summer we go to Cape Cod as a family vacation for one week.  My in laws usually rent a house for the week and spend between 2-3k for the week.  Every time we go I look at the house online and see the amount we are spending basically can cover the property taxes alone for the year.  I then wonder how much these landlords actually make on a weekly basis through the summer and realize it can be relatively profitable!

This whole idea got me curious and excited about the opportunity to try to do something similar.  I realize I am pretty late to the “game” but knowing it is something we love doing every year (going to cape cod) it would be nice if I could be a landlord and have the ability to stay at my house for 1 or 2 weeks of the year and rent out the remainder of the summer and any other pockets of time that are valuable in the cape.


I know if I did this I would really only be able to get a place that is 300-400k and I really just want to break even at the very minimum to at least get some equity while having a “free” vacation spot.  However I am having trouble finding any decent place for that price and found myself exploring properties on the internet in Florida because we are going down to Jacksonville/st Augustine for the summer and realize I can get so much more bang for my buck down there.

I am wondering if I should give up on cape cod and do more of a long distance approach (as I can also turn Florida into an annual spring break location for the family) or if someone can help me feel comfortable in the cape cod approach in my price range.  Anything somewhat close to a beach and or nice area to walk around a neighborhood is just too pricey.  Are prices expected to stay and climb in cape cod or where does the market look to be going?  Any insight there is helpful!

Lastly, I opened up a small llc in hopes of buying a property under the llc but am realizing many lenders will not deal with lending to an llc w no equity or anything in it.  Can someone advise on this approach and how to get good financing to start knowing I would put around 20% down or less if possible?

sorry know its a lot but just really trying to learn right now.  Thank you in advance!