All Forum Posts by: DL Martin

I don't mean to be contrary, but this is wildly inaccurate. Homeless people die constantly from exposure. Summer and winter.  The alcohol and drug use causes them to go to sleep without using the clothing/blankets/materials that they keep with them for that purpose. 

I personally have responded to thousands of "I think he might be dead" calls. Usually they aren't. But many times, they are. And you are right, I don't know that "unattended deaths" are tracked by any government agency. 

My experience was in SoCal, but I'm sure that there are some NYPD/NYFD BP'ers here who can give an estimate on the number of homeless that die from exposure on any given night in NYC during January. I would venture to say that more homeless folks die from exposure in NYC in one month than die in all "sub standard housing" accidents/fires/incidents in an entire year in the entire USA. 

DL

The safest, most sustainable place for a homeless person to sleep is inside a locked vehicle. Even in the dead of winter, with a decent sleeping bag, out of the precipitation and wind, a person can sleep quite well in a non-running vehicle. 

Unfortunately, instead of trying to create enforceable guidelines for this, city councils have passed municipal codes completely outlawing this practice.  

DL

Meth is just another product. They do have to buy their drugs somewhere. That "somewhere" should be a government ran facility that is exactly like the government ran liquor stores in Ohio. Sell all drugs for exactly the very low cost to manufacture the drug and then add an extremely small tax to pay the store lease and the store labor cost. 

I had a front row seat to the taxpayer funded "war on drugs" for twenty eight (28) years. The drug epidemic lives on, the Mexican Cartels continue to thrive and the American Taxpayer weeps. 

DL

Because many people in "the rest of the country" see Californians as smug, self important, arrogant buttholes whom are intoxicated with deficit spending, both personally and with regard to state government. 

Pelosi, Boxer, Feinstein, The Governor, The "bullet train", $100k public employee pensions, High VerbalVolume/Low intelligence actors, Housewives of Orange County, and on and on and on. 

In polite conversation here in Cincinnati, when people learn that I am a Californian, they often treat me with "Forrest Gump Like" pity. It usually begins with "Oh, I visit Los Angeles on business... the traffic, the smog, the congestion, the overcrowding, no one speaks English..." and then they quickly follow up with how smart I was to move my family to Cincinnati. 

For better or for worse, Los Angeles IS California to most people. They seem to forget that while the Los Angeles basin is pretty much a toilet, San Diego, Monterey, Paso Robles, Santa Barbara, Temecula, Palm Springs do in fact exist...

California was very good to me and continues to be good to me, month after month. But the reality is, for how much longer can the State of California continue to pay police officers and firefighters $100k annual pensions??? I retired 6 days after I turned 50. I don't smoke or drink. Both my parents lived to almost 90. So I worked for 25 years and they are going to pay that pension for 40 years??? And then after I die, my wife gets 50% of my pension until she dies???

I seriously doubt it. 

DL

Go to a BP meetup or local REI group and seek out a partner. Give away the majority of the deal, but get the deal. Pay your taxes and then put the rest of the profit toward the worst of those credit cards.

You guys need to keep your chins up and get that first deal done. 

You can do it. Regular people do it all of the time. 

DL 

My family and I have been to Charleston three times this summer. We will either buy something in Charleston Proper or maybe Folly, or we will get a nice used Prevost or Newell and "commute".  LOL. 

Either way, we will likely end up in SC in a few years. (my kid is a Freshman in HS, so we are looking at 4 more years in Cincinnati)

DL

P.S. Wolf and SubZero are both superior to Thermador and Viking. Next time we are going to give Bertazzoni a try and on the Fridge we are going to go with a full size LG and move the wall out to give the appearance of a counter depth commercial. If money were no object, it would be Wolf and Subzero.  : )   Maybe on my Charleston House. LOL. 

@Jay Hinrichs

Jay, its easy for me to believe that PDX has those kinds of fees but South Carolina???

The point with my earlier post is that building, and buying retail, are two different things. People that want to pay for the convenience of moving into a Turn key house have to pay for that convenience. 

I like nice things. But until recently, I did not have a high Net income. So while working my regular job, I collected bids and signed contracts and my wife essentially ran the job. I worked 1500-0100 with Fri, Sat, and Sun off, so I was able to be at the jobsite everyday. I am a micromanager. I believe in working in my business, not on my business. No one else can do it the same way that I can and will. 

I will never scale. So be it. 

But when you own a "D Class" 39 unit apartment complex  with not one single tenant moving out in almost a year, you feel like you have captured lightning in a bottle and are not prone to trust someone else to keep the lid on. 

Which leads me to the most important point:

Some guy on BP named Jay REPEATEDLY tells newbies that it is POSSIBLE to make money in the midwest on C class properties. But that Jay fellow ALWAYS follows that up with a stern warning that these properties are a contact sport, best handled by local operators who have their fingers on the pulse of their units at all times. 

I'd like to meet that Jay guy sometime...#nosubstituteforexperience

DL 

"if a house sells for 1 million, the land is worth about 700k"

"A typical house costs $150/sf to build"...    

All of your posts in this thread are filled with mind numbing generalizations. 

Raw land is worth what someone is willing to pay, on any given day. 

A typical house costs $150/sf to build????  Maybe for a complete idiot. 

Take a look at the photos below. Is this a "typical house"?  Notice the 48" Thermador range and hood. Notice the Viking Fridge. Notice the travertine floors and backsplashes. Notice the miles of granite countertops.  Notice the 10' ceilings in the kitchen and bedroom. Notice the 8' tall, solid core doors. That house has 24 of those interior doors. And giant crown molding in every single room, including the closets. 

This house was built with a $387k construction loan for $77/sf.  That price does NOT include the 921 sq ft attached garage. (Home was constructed in SoCal during the Bubble of 2008.  The California building "fees" were another $54k. Yes, $54k in fees, to you non-Californians who may be reading this...) But even with the cost of fees included, its still "only" $88/sf. But keep in mind, the guy building a house in Ohio will have $1k in fees, not $54k in fees. 

Please do not attempt to justify the high cost of residential real estate in California with an "intrinsic value of land" argument. People pay those prices because they believe that the price will be higher when they decide to sell. It has nothing to do with the cost to build or the "value" of the land. 

DL

@Sean Thompson , your a smart guy.  I can pick up what your putting down. 

So I'm going to give you advice that everyone else will disagree with. 

Get out of the service bay and get behind a counter. Write service. Talk to every single customer. Keep your antenna up for people who mention that they work in some area of real estate sales, real estate finance, the trades, etc. , anything real estate. And always be networking. And then network some more. 

Find a D class 4 plex "deal" that needs work in KC. Rehab it yourself, subbing out the stuff that you can't do yourself and the stuff that is time intensive. (dry wall finishing comes to mind). Make it the best looking apartment in the area and run it on Craigslist at market rate. Place a good renter in that apartment. Do this for all 4 apartments. After a year or so you will be an experienced rehab'er and landlord.... with a good W2 job. 

Lenders will love you. 

Find that second deal. Sub out more of the work this time, using the monthly profit from the first deal to pay for the labor on the second deal. By now you will have learned to use Home Depot and Lowes "6 months same as cash" credit cards to defer all of your materials costs to come due after the apartments are rented so that they can pay themselves off. 

Working on cars is a physical job. You won't be able to work on apartments while doing that job. Writing service will allow you to conserve physical energy that you will need for working on your properties.

My wife was a stay at home mom also and I was an idiot who refused to leave patrol during my entire police career (ghetto street cop= total waste of 25 years of my life). Don't be stupid like me. Use your talents to accumulate assets that produce income. 

Get going.

DL

If you can afford C- in San Diego, you are completely out of your mind to even think about buying B or B+ in Ohio. 

Buy the C- in San Diego and manage the thing yourself. 

DL