All Forum Posts by: Harry Zhou

Thanks. I have my Indy local team :) 

We asked at least 5 lenders. Portfolio is an option, the cost is rather high though. @Jaron Walling

Dear Indy Investors,

We just acquired a 7-br SFH near the university with cash. We rented the rooms out to individual students and it worked out okay. However, when we tried to do a cash-out refinance, we couldn't find any other 7-br comparable sales close by. Most of them are 4 and some 5 beds. Do you have any good strategy or people to get equity out of this investment? Thanks

BTW, if you are an out-of-state investor in Indianapolis, let's connect :) I am a SWE in San Francisco bay area.

46241: C, not B. 

4/2 at around $50k that will rent for $850 to $900: make it C-

The lesson I learned the hard way: if it's cheap, there's  a reason...

Any Bozeman/Belgrade area whole sellers / JVs, please connect with me.

Anyone has a good Indy lender, feel free to pm me. Most of the lenders I contact won't work with out-of-state investors. 

LOL, poor CA investors. @Richard C.

I expected a lot but didn't see the "partnership" part coming.

Any recommendations please? Looking for tenant procurement service only.

Dear BP, are there any Agents/PMs offering only finding Tenant Service (including open house)? I have a handyman that I trust who can react to the day2day situation if needed.

The reason I want this is to make my own decision in accepting tenant. I had just an eviction case which was totally avoidable IMO.

Also the PM refused to list my property and find tenant, unless I repaint the wall (which was painted 5 months ago and looks totally fine to me). 

Not to discredit PMs, it's okay to have disagreements but I want more control.

My Year 2015 in review HERE

Background: busy software engineer in SF bay area. 

Strategy 2016: Cautiously buy out of state properties, accumulate cashflow for my balance sheet (to qualify bigger loans).

Started 2016:

• 6 (all out of state) rental properties.
• Holding cash/stocks for out of state investments.

Today:

• Raised rent on 3 properties.
• Added 3 more rental properties, all in Indiana
  • Purchased 2 properties from whole sellers and remotely rehabbed.
  • Used a new loan to purchase one higher priced and newer property (remotely rehab). After rehab it was October, I experienced the longest 3-month vacancy in my investment.
• The Athens GA property continued to be troublesome. We had a 2.5-month vacancy. Refer to my last year's review for the seller.
• Connected with some experienced sf bay area investors who own properties with 6000/mo rent income. They really changed my perspective about cashflow. What if I only own 3 or 4 of these kind of properties free and clear? Isn't that a better way of retirement than owning 50 properties out-of-state?
• One of the tenants sneaked a big dog into one property and made a lot of damages. My PM did a great job handling the eviction and repairs.
• Holding 9 properties at the end of the year.

2017 Goal:
Apparently I didn't finish my 2016 goal of purchasing 4+ more SFH. Only did 3, but I am OK with that. Since deals are harder to find, I've started looking into commercial properties.

Another goal of 2016 was to close a 3plex at the start of the year. At the end I backed out of that opportunity because of continuous delay in rehab. And I believe another BPer picked it up. I am happy with that decision looking back now.

• Slow down and accumulate cash reserve. Stick with my numbers for new purchase, especially for cash flows. Getting ready for a downturn or at least a slow down in 2018. Indy market has become very expensive compared to 2015 when I started investing there. The local bay area market is still red hot and even more unaffordable.
• Diversify investments in bay area and out-of-state. 
• Explore further areas from bay area (e.g., Sacramento) for cash flow opportunities. 

Assuming you are on wechat, we have an active group of out-of-state investor based in CA. Feel free to ping me if you are interested. @Ray Lai