All Forum Posts by: Bill Wallace

Hi Jason - welcome.

I'm also a Realtor/investor in the west metro.

One piece of advice that's worked well for me. Always offer a deal to your tenants that allows them to cancel their 12 month lease at any time if they use you to buy a house. At the end of 12 months don't allow them to go month to month - make them do a new 12 month lease. I've had 4 tenant transactions adding almost $20k to my real estate income. I advertise this in all my open units and have had people specifically select my properties knowing they could cancel and not have to worry about when they were going to close on a house.

Maybe works well for me as most of my properties are good starter townhouses for young couples so may depend on your rental stock.

Welcome!

I'm a Realtor in the west metro and own 10 rental properties (11th under contract). My niche has been townhouses & condo's. Didn't want to have to deal with outside maintenance issues. I've purchased them all in the past 4 years as a buy and hold investment with the goal of providing passive income to retire early. I manage them myself, do some of the work but have a group of contractors to handle lots of things I don't want or can't do.

I'd be happy to answer any questions. I agree with the poster that said you should understand what your goals and strengths are.

In regard to open houses, in my listing presentation I tell sellers that according to NAR less than 1% of homes sell via an open house. I then tell them I'm happy to do them but that the main reason Realtor's do them is to find buyer clients - not necessarily for that listing. Finally, I tell them if we do have them it's best to have them during the first couple weekends when the interest in a house is at its highest.

I then leave it up to the client - probably goes about 50/50 whether we have any.

I've been a Realtor for 5 years. My advice would be to try one or both of these - 

Open Houses - someone else mentioned this but I definitely would recommend this. Hopefully you work for a larger brokerage who has lots of agents with listings. I know one of the more successful agents at my first brokerage who held 5 opens a week at other agent's listings. 2 on Saturday, 2 on Sunday and 1 on Thursday night (2 hours each). It's a lot of work but after doing this for 2 years she had lots of clients that became the basis of her referral base for her career.

Expired Listings - early in my career I invested in an expired listing program from Borino. While there are lots of agents going after expired listings I put together a packet of information (per the Borino template) and instead of calling or mailing like everyone else I actually drove out to each expired listing that I thought looked good every morning. I knocked on door to see if they were still interested in selling and gave/left packet. This works because it shows you are proactive and can communicate. Lots of people who had their listing expire are upset with prior agent for not communicating or being proactive enough. I got 8 of my first 12 listings that way. That said, it did work well 4 years ago when the market was down and there were lots of expired listings in my market - not sure if it would work as well today when it's a sellers market (here) and a lot fewer expired's.

Good luck!

Thanks - fixed it. Wish it didn't default to draft.

I started a blog and wrote my first blog posting on BP but the article is sitting in the queue as a "draft" and doesn't seem to be posting. Does it need to be moderated or is there some other issue going on?

I'm a Realtor.

You stated the following "I guess in the end I would save 1.5% or even much more if I happen to get the buyer as well."

If you are the listing agent and the owner of the home I would HIGHLY advise you to not try and represent the buyer in the same transaction. No way to avoid fiduciary & agency issues.

Try interviewing a few alternative options. I know I'd offer a pretty low cost model if I was going to get regular buy side sales.

Finally, you mention an expectation around open houses. Just keep in mind that according to NAR less than 1% of houses sell via open house. Most Realtors do them as a means to find buyer clients, not to sell that house.

To me another big consideration is whether you can find enough properties as listings are down and prices are up. In many markets investors are having a hard time finding places right now.

My point is that in theory it would be better to buy 4 places with 25% down each but in practice it may be much harder to actually find 4 places vs. the 1 place to buy with cash.

In addition, it's probably easier to get your offer accepted as all cash (although you can certainly buy with cash and get a loan on it later).

Call the Denver Association of Realtors or the CO Dept of Commerce.

I'm a little late to the MN party. I have 9 rental units in the Twin Cities. As for checking rents I use a combination of Craigslist, Hotpads.com and Padmapper.com.