All Forum Posts by: Andrew Lawrence

Hey bp community,

So recently just watched the youtube video (title in title) on youtube and felt compelled to ask a few burning questions. Brandon mentions that the best range to buy multifam rentals to avoid competing with the big guys early on is in the 5-30 unit range, so it got me thinking and here's a list I came up with;

1. Why are 5-30 unit apts more difficult to manage than 100+ unit ones?
2. When he says the "management isnt baked into the numbers necessarily, does he mean its cheaper to hire an on-site property manager vs one that has to run around?

Hi,

Looking for a contractor referral in Pierce county WA. Someone that can handle small jobs like paint and flooring up to large jobs like building additions to existing structure. 

Thanks

Hi,

I am in the process of closing a house with FHA financing and its going to take about a month. However, I am seeing other deals that look good and I don't want to jeopardize anything. I'm wondering if using Hard money on the other deals would trigger any concerns with the current lender and affect whats going on currently or if it would be better to just sit tight and wait for things to finish up before looking at any other properties.

Thanks

I recently heard a suggestion on vetting PMs by looking their company name up in court records to find if they have any pending lawsuits and then interviewing them based off of that knowledge (more lawsuits = more suspicious). How often do others do this as part of their vetting process for PMs? Or is this an extra unneeded step? If you do suggest this, how do you go about finding this information?

Which is the most accurate in determining how well a target market is doing economically as far as number of jobs and job growth is concerned? Does looking at MSA numbers or county numbers or city numbers reflect a better picture? 

(if it helps specify my question I would consider purchasing outside of the target primary market of the big metro areas and rather look at surrounding areas as it seems the purchase price to cash flow ratio is higher just outside of the big metro areas).

How did he find out in the end? And solution for the fake charges? I can only assume you have them take a photo of work before and work completed after right? 

For example, say you owned a MFP with many units or an out of state property that you can't or don't check on too frequently and the property manager says there's a vacant unit that they're working on filling but they've secretly rented it out and are pocketing the money from the "empty" rental unit, whats the simplest way to find out whether this sort of thing is occuring?

I doubt this is a likely scenario but I just want piece of mind knowing theres a solution to this should it ever be a possibility.

When analysing a real estate market, aside from job & population growth which seem arguably the most important factors, how important is looking at a city's number of new commercial and multifamily construction in a given area (construction/community growth?) and how do you gauge this? I have seen ideas such as looking at the number of permits issued at a city/county permitting office but even they don't seem to have all of the info together to show the bigger picture of how a city is doing in terms of investment activity, best ways to approach this?

I have heard suggestions to pay a contractor a bonus for completing work early and penalizing for late work. How do you know that they don't abuse the trust between the two of you with this system? Example: they give you a bid and say it should take 4 weeks to complete a job, you get it in writing and promise to pay a 5k bonus if they complete the job in 3 weeks. They follow through. In the second job, they quote 5 weeks, knowing that you're likely to pay another nice bonus for finishing early even though they know they could really complete it in 4 and once again, complete the job in 4 weeks and get the bonus for finishing "early".

And on that note, the term "Firing fast" when you recognize a contractor isnt quite working out also goes around. How do you have the talk to let them go? Especially if they are in the middle of a project and still have some left from a partial draw?

When giving out draws to contractors (30/30/30/10), how do you determine, based on pictures what percentage of the work is actually complete? As in, the contractor has started his first 1/3 of work, calls/texts you and says he's ready for another draw, sends you pictures of completed work. Coming from someone with minimal construction knowledge or experience, how do you gauge that a project is a certain percentage complete? Ex. I can see the granite countertops are done, but based on the whole project, what percentage does that equate to?