All Forum Posts by: Caroline Widjaja

 For me, buying is always harder than selling...

Hello Sophie, I am still buying investment properties, but I focus more on cash flow. Year by year, it's becoming tough to find cash-flowing properties all over the states. I know the interest rate is high right now, but I'm planning to refi when the interest rate is go down (hoping the interest rate will go down in the next 3-5 years).

In your case, don't buy. Mine is still cash flowing on my newly acquired property. I used BRRRR method.

Mine is netting $300-500/door. I rarely have vacancies for all of my properties, mostly are multi-year tenants. All of my properties are in C-Class neighborhood. You won't get much cash flow in A & B-Class properties. Finding a good tenant that takes care of your properties is also a key, besides finding  good properties at the right time. 

Simple answer: Only an experienced local realtor knows.

Sometimes people overreact over nothing. Some layoffs happened, but the company are still hiring seasonal workers. If you look at other career opportunities such as accounting in real estate firm/other industries, you will see tons of job opportunities out there right now. Bottom line, company feels overpaying the employees, so they did some layoffs, and then rehire them at a much lower pay during the "recession/crash/whatever you name it".  Company are just taking advantage of the situation. 

I used to work in one of the private equity firm where it's used to be only 3 big players back then (American Homes 4 Rent, Blackstone, & Colony Capital). The company that I worked for were invested heavily in SFR only (buy, small fix-up, and rent it out), bought a lot of JP Morgan portfolios and made a lot of money from that. It is not a surprise to me that now BlackRock, JP Morgan, and JLL enter this market. My big boss once told us "US will become a renter's nation", you will see if he's telling the truth or not.

It's true that it's tough to find cash-flowing properties in CA. It's either small ROI or break-even. Most investors only rely on appreciation in CA. I once worked for a big hedge fund real estate firm in CA, even though they bought bulks of SFH properties from the big banks, their ROI only 5-6%, and they bought it 8-10 years ago. By now, they have A LOT OF equities from it. I would say they made a pretty good move back then, even the ROI is small.

Started investing in Q4 2017 and I wish we bought a lot back then. I've been so blessed to find my good and honest real estate agent & PM in Columbus, and so far it's a smooth sailing, no regrets or mistakes for ALL of my deals in Columbus. Keep in mind that I have a pretty good real estate investment background for many years before jumping into Columbus market and my husband is a Buckeye alumni and maybe that helps. If I were you, you need to fly to Columbus to see the neighborhood and to get an idea what kind of neighborhood you're looking for. One street maybe lined up with many good properties, the other street maybe lined up with some boarded homes.

1% rule or 10% rule is NOT applicable in CA. That's the truth. CA market is good for appreciation only. If you're looking for a 1 or 10% rule, you have a better chance investing out of CA.