All Forum Posts by: Brian P.

Well the first big problem you are going to run into is finding a seller who will sell at a price that you can rent out one side and live in the other for free. That would be one great find. That is like the owner selling one property to you and giving you another property free.  

What you normally have is the situation where the one side helps subsidize the other side (owner)to a small degree, especially in the high price coastal areas of California. Not until rents have risen enough from the date you buy it will you see any sizable relief.

Erika

You need to become a schedule junkie. Out line the entire week, all seven days. I used to fill in the must dos first, like go to your job and do it well. Then I looked at those hours and said what can I do there to promote my future. That meant lunch hour could be studying REI or making a phone call, not possible if you couldn't use the company phone in the old days but with cell phones now, easy to do. Same thing with coffee breaks. Listen to real estate on your commute, and if your drive maybe a little driving for dollars on the way home.

Keep filling in the blanks until they are full. And yes schedule sleep time, wearing yourself out is not a great idea. Always ask yourself if this is the best thing I could be doing. Do you realize that 10 minutes a day for a year is roughly 3600 minutes, or 60 hours. As an investor you time is worth at least one dollar a minute or $60 an hour.  That ten minutes is worth $3600 dollars. Throwing 10 minutes a day away is like throwing away $3600. The old saying time is money is true. I realized that one day standing in long line at the bank and said to myself how can I take advantage of this time waster or avoid it, my first thought was to just leave and do it some other time but that would have upset my wife, so I said what do I do for a living?  

Answer, talk to people and prospect. so I started a conversation with the guy behind me an said by the way do you know anyone who invests in real estate, and he said why so I gave a reason, he said his brother was looking for a home, if it was a deal maybe he would be interested, and as luck would have it I sold a house I had just locked up. 

But I would often say I would like to ask some investors for their opinions and it would be great if they could spare me a few minutes to help me out. Sometime I would say something about a current deal but would add what I am really looking for at the moment is someone with some money that they have earning money in a savings account at 1% and are losing 3% to inflation. I borrow it at 6% secured by real estate ( they usually ask for more so I start at 6). this has led to private money. Especially when I ask them if they know about the rule of 72.

There is always the possibility that the property can be seized by the authorities and will be auctioned off by them because of the drug connection. And if he was a successful drug dealer he really doesn't have any money problems if he has any brains. If he was small potatoes and the property isn't seized maybe a deal can be done, but I don't know what was done there, any meth lab violations? Authorities do not like to seize meth properties but if they do there is a potential buy there.

Even drug dealers want top price and most likely will list it with an agent, or counter at a closer to market price even though it is "tainted".  I would investigate everything and take a shot but I have had better luck with homes owned by someone that killed someone else and feared a wrongful death lawsuit that would take the house and they most likely would get nothing then drug properties.

Sounds to me like your in a good spot to start and have no reason to quit your job until the next train is ready to leave and you have a ticket and a pocket full of money and the knowledge you will need to continue the trip. 

You already have one great team member in place, and if you have a true desire you are on your way. You now need to learn how to find and evaluate deals, until you can do that keep on drawing. When you can do that well you are almost to the next station and can buy a new ticket at the next station for your next destination and before you know it you will one day be buying a ticket for your final stop. 

I would really like to be more specific but I know nothing of the UK and it's current ways. Last time my family had anything to do with England was was when they were trying to keep them out of our yard, Scotland. 

David

Yes you can do that as long as your broker has the same status. This was put into law in California by a court decision in Marin County.

Now if your going to be active and take the opportunity to list properties you find that are not good investments at the price offered you can go to plan B and list them and pay your overhead. Also you will find buyers maybe checking out one of your properties and you can sell them something else listed or not and pocket some extra cash. 

Before I became a broker and just had my sales license the first broker I was with was an investor and was really ok with my investing because he understood that brought more business to the office. When I moved to the next county the broker wanted the office cut on all my deals period, listed or not, so I started doing all my investing in my wife's name and got him ticked off but I soon had my brokers license and started my own company. if your going to be active as an agent I would suggest joining the association. If you just do a couple of deals a year on your agent status you will cover your agent overhead, and if your an active prospecting investor you should be able to do that easy.

When my brother and I started investing we didn't hesitate to work areas that were going down hill, we remembered how great they once were and wanted to revive them. Well we found out that was like trying to empty the ocean with a bucket and soon adopted our foundation policy of bread and butter properties or better. Suggest if your going to buy and hold you ask what is it that will you be holding down the road? On the farm we called that buying a dead horse, one just about ready for the glue factory. Let the glue factory be the buyer, not you.

Why not check with the source. Call the MLS you want access to and find out. Are you a broker or a salesperson? Sales person, then you first job is to find a broker you can hang your license with.

The MLS can give you the names of the Non-association broker members so there would be no CAR and NAR dues and this is allowed by California law. Since you only want MLS access this is the cheapest way to go and still have an active license.

I vote for door knocking. When I first started working NOD's I would drop stuff off, mail just to avoid facing the angry beast behind that door, I waited to be invited. Phase two, just going to the door for my first contact and making sure I wasn't dressed like a banker. When I learned to offer help my success rate jumped by 400%.

I once ran into an angry king kong, and I finally figured I was about to die when I said tell me something if you were in a serious car accident and bleeding profusely, would you yell at people stopping their cars and coming to help you and tell them to get the hell away from you? I don't think so, and here I am to see if I can help stop the bleeding or drive you to the emergency room and your being a total*******. I didn't cause your accident. He went totally silent and just stared at me. I finally broke the ice by saying I just think I hit you at a really bad time, how about we get together maybe this afternoon or tomorrow?  He just mumbled yeh this afternoon about two would be OK. And a deal was born.

Joshua

I'm still going to keep my secret weapon secret for a few more years. But something I have used in situations like this is to ask what do you think your heirs are going to do with a large amount of cash they get all at once. My experience is they usually blow a lot of it on ridiculous things, and that is wonderful for a short while. But you give them a double gift Mrs. Seller. you can fix it now where they will get the money already invested at a good rate of return and available to them over time and by then their choices will be wiser and benefit their futures.

How do you do that, easy, you can check with a lawyer and your tax adviser, but all you do is take back the mortgage on the sale of your property and put it into a trust to avoid probate and when our maker calls you, you avoid probate on that part of your estate and your heirs as trustees can get your gift to them already invested wisely.

I agree with the post that income and cash flow determines the price on a four-plex. There are exceptions of course, such as when the Ellis Act passed in California and you could convert from tenant to owner occupied and finally sell income property at a truly fair market price in rent controlled areas. I believe I was the first to break the Berkeley rent control boards little kingdom of pushing around landlords and making them dance for their amusement. So in those cases I could pay more because when I converted them to TIC's a large profit was created.

I still believe in location, are these in Oakland, or Walnut Creek? The East Bay is a very large area and is where I started. How old is this woman? There are ways to satisfy her wishes of leaving heirs a set amount of money that would allow her to get less for her property and to accomplish her goals. Don't ask me how, I bought a 14 story building while two of the biggest commercial brokers kept telling the owner his wishes couldn't be fulfilled and then they bugged me for a couple of years asking me how I did it. Even though I retired Jan 1st I am still keeping that tidbit quiet for a couple more years. And I intend to pass it on to a great nephew first because I know of a forming situation in his area that could become his first mega deal using this as the answer.