All Forum Posts by: Celena Lathrop

My advice is to never decrease your success. If your direct mail is having an excellent response rate, you've reached the goal of many investors, hopefully including yourself. Don't go backwards; instead, hire someone (anyone) to answer calls and screen out the legitimate and ideal deals/sellers. Get a family member to help out for some side cash, put out a simple ad, or ask around on BP and find someone who can just answer these calls and find the real deals and eliminate the duds. This saves your valuable time for the real deals. You can also hire someone for your DM process. Congratulations on your success!

Austin is a great market in RE right now! It also depends what you're looking for. SFH investment opportunities are in abundance as well as condos and some complexes, but small MF is few and far between. Also, it depends on your budget. Because Austin has such a flourishing economy right now, property prices are climbing. You're going to struggle to find any property under $250k that is rent-ready. They're out there, but tricky to find! I can't give you any advice on the Nashville market but that summarizes Austin more or less. Best of luck!

Going off of @Matthew Olszak's comment, you simply need to inform the prospective tenant that you cannot accept OR reject the application until you have received it in FULL, completed. You can't get into any legal trouble if you haven't rejected them. They don't need to know whether or not you have other applications yet, simply tell them you need the completed applications for both of them before you can proceed. 

@Dave Raney Great strategies. Sounds like you've got a great plan in place to achieve success; that's fantastic. Best of luck!

@Dave Raney While there is no one right way to do RE marketing, direct mail and driving for dollars are certainly extremely effective for many investors. On the other hand, some investors find that it's not the best strategy for them personally. I personally prefer driving for dollars because the best way FOR ME to find off-market deals is to get out of the house and find them. You need to use trial and error a bit to identify YOUR strengths and preferences and determine which strategies work best for you. You are essentially investing in your real estate education. Spend a little time and money to try as many strategies as you can to find which strategies you prefer and succeed at, then focus on those and master them. There are certainly resources to find distressed properties (and probates, divorces, etc.). I recommend getting creative (this is my strategy of choice) and instead of looking on List Source and other well-known sites, look to the roads less traveled. Look in the newspaper for the obituaries of recently deceased or go online and find the homeowners who are getting divorced or falling behind on their property tax payments. The possibilities are endless.

The best place to start, believe it or not, is with a W-2 job. You will be at a disadvantage in real estate without a W-2 because it will be extremely challenging to acquire a loan from a bank, and without a track record, it will be a struggle to get lending privately or from other sources. Save a few thousand from a job then try to house hack a single family or small MF property. You can use an FHA loan which has a low interest rate or just a conventional loan. Those are great strategies for new investors. You also new to educate yourself ALOT. Discover if real estate is even the right avenue for you. It is an excellent method to receive passive income, but it's not for everyone. Listen to real estate podcasts, read blogs, research the laws on HUD, NOLO, etc. Great starting points. Another key is to network. Use BP as a tool to find other investors, mentors, even agents and lenders that can give you advice and prevent you from making the same mistakes as others. You will need a strong team to be successful in real estate, and you must network to find that team. And READ READ READ. Read all the favorites - Rich Dad Poor Dad, 4 Hour Work Week, Millionaire RE Investor, The Cash Flow Quadrants, The Book on Managing Rental Properties (Brandon and Heather Turner), The Ultimate Beginners Guide and all the BP books on the site, The 10x Rule, Landlording for Dummies, Landlording on Autopilot, and so on..

@Sam T. While this is easier said than done, I recommend trying to find independent property managers rather than going through a company. Generally these companies employ MANY property managers that are far from exceptional and are juggling the management of a long list of properties. They often just don't have the time or desire to be diligent in managing each individual property, as you yourself would. Finding a property manager who is self-employed or working for a smaller local company would be ideal. That way you know it is more likely that they'll be able to take extra care when handling your property and its tenants. Therefore, to answer what the downsides are to hiring a PM, it is simply that they will not care as much about the property, repairs/maintenance, the tenants, or enforcing your policies as you would. To establish some criteria and questions for the hiring process if you choose to go that route, I recommend researching some generic job interview questions first. First and foremost, you are hiring them as an employee, and you need to identify their skills and work ethic. I also recommend you ask them how they would handle hypothetical scenarios with your property and tenants. For example, "what would you do if a tenant gives you verbal notice of a repair that needs to be made and threatens to withhold rent until the repair has been performed." There are many examples you could use, based on your own experience and knowledge of managing properties. Basically, your goal is to ask as thorough questions as possible to make sure they will be capable of handing the problems that arise in this business.

@Dave Raney Have you considered using alternative methods of acquiring deals? Direct mail is a great way to get in touch with potential sellers directly and sidestep using real estate agents and competitive offers.

You should include your minimum qualifications, but you will still receive these questions and that's okay! Depending on your flexibility as a landlord, there may be prospective tenants that do not quite meet the min qualifications, but are still ideal candidates and you may consider accepting. For example, say a tenant has mediocre credit but excellent income and a perfect rental record. You complete a phone interview and decide that they are the best candidate and you wish to accept their application. Their credit doesn't quite meet the standard, but they are great candidates in every other way. You might still accept them despite that flaw. Again, this depends entirely upon your standards and what is essential in a tenant, but personally I might still accept that prospective tenant. So I suggest including a disclaimer that indicates that applicants may still be accepted if they don't meet every qualification OR keeping your qualifications to a minimum in your ads. Just a suggestion based on personal experience.

Welcome to BP! It can be very difficult to find the right deal in a hot market. I recommend you analyze MANY deals to identify which types of properties work best to get the right numbers (meaning SF, duplex, tri, quad, and so on). You may not achieve the 2% rule right off the bat, but maybe shoot for 1% for your first deal and as you gain more capital from cash flow and your FT job, you can invest in higher value properties with more cash flow. I can also recommend that you manipulate the numbers to make a deal better. If a property doesn't meet the 1% or 2% rule, you could put a larger down payment forward to start off with more equity so that it DOES meet the rule. Another consideration is that maybe you need to offer less on the deals you pursue. Remember, if you're not embarrassed by your offer, it's not low enough. Only make offers that work for YOU, even if it's significantly less than the asking price. Never be afraid to offend the seller. They always have the option to reject your offer, but you might catch a break and get a seller to bite at the hook.