All Forum Posts by: Chris Gordon

Based on the contexts in which I see the term cashflow being used, I define it as what's left over after all your bills and after your no-BS reserves (e.g. repairs & capex which I don't see how anyone can put less than 200/month towards, prop management, vacancy).

I'd consider anything before accounting for these to be revenue, not income.

@Brent Coombs I'm not questioning the use of leverage, however the more of your own cash you put into a deal the  better the cashflow looks. That's not investing to me, that's buying cashflow. If you accept that as fact then you really need to consider, hypothetically, what a 100% leveraged property looks like...does it cashflow after all expenses then? If it doesn't then it's probably not a good investment. Pretty much the opposite of cap rate.

...the wide variety of answers and points bring brought up has shown there's not agreement around this idea of buying cash flow vs investing in assets.  

@Chris Seveney, how do you actually do IRR? My basic understanding is you need to know all income and expenses for a period of time, so effectively you can't apply it to analysis of potential investments (pre-purchase), unless you use assumptions and plugs? Is that what you're implying?

Want to get the more experienced folks' opinion on something I'm thinking about....

It's easy to increase cashflow with a greater downpayment / less leverage. However, is that really investing or something akin to buying an annuity?

I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with buying a cashflow stream; it's dependent on your goals. However I don't think it's necessarily investing in the Warren Buffett sense of the word.

I'm interested in if everyone thinks this is a distinction worth  making? If so what's a good way to quickly determine the difference? Cash-on-cash return or Return-on-equity? Cap Rate? Whatever the opposite of cap rate is: figuring out what the returns would look like if you were to 100% leverage the property? 

thanks

I have a website (http://iheartsouthhills.com) that I'm trying to both SEO and PPC-promote as a lead generator for my own portfolio and secondarily to generate wholesale/rehab income. Obviously SEO and PPC are different. 

Curious to know conversions so I can compare my performance and estimate cost per lead and cost per deal through PPC.

I see from your profile your active duty, Semper Fi.

What’s everyone’s CTR and conversions?

I have dabbled in this. I’ve seen 2-4% depending on the ad group/focus, but in the last few weeks I’ve received 35 clicks and one conversion.

How’s everyone else’s experience? 

Any best practices you’ve discovered?

I'm working on my website's SEO. I'd like to start publishing my blog posts on BP in addition to the other sites I publish to. So far it appears off-site addresses are nofollow'ed. Is that BP policy or am I missing something?

I would offer that as rates go up there will probably be downward pressure on sales prices. 

@David Grabiner I see you're from Chattanooga. We love that town. Unfortunately we weren't so sure of the schools. Do you actively invest there? That's on my radar for out-of-state investments.

Still there’s an argument there for having investments more liquid than RE at the ready for those times, if and when they occur again