All Forum Posts by: Damian Smith

Welcome Lisa. If I lived in Detroit I would probably focus on wholesaling/flipping as it provides a quicker exit than buy and hold.

The Dollar is still the world's reserve currency so reserve banks around the world are compelled to keep buying dollars. Also, a fall in the Dollar will cause some inflation but you are very unlikely to see any hyper inflation. Besides inflation, any fall in the value of the US Dollar will only affect people trying to repatriate money to other countries. I choose to keep all the profits from my US based investments in Dollars so currency fluctuations are not really a concern for me.

Hi Johnnie. I'm an hour away from you in Johannesburg. Have you invested before?

Welcome Holly,

Minneapolis is one of my favourite cities. I plan on investing there in June. Welcome to an awesome site.

Damian

As a person looking to invest, a HomeVestors franchise seems intriguing but their rules on absentee ownership makes it a non starter for me. Some people get too polemical when discussing HomeVestors but I do share some of their concerns. My main concern is the lack of transparency this company exhibits. Why not just come out and say what the average franchise makes? If the testimonials can be backed up by empirical data I'm sure many of us would jump at the opportunity of investing.

I know that one can get the same leads cheaper but the question I would ask myself is how much greater the deal flow being in HomeVestors is than doing it on your own. From what I've read, HomeVestors does offer financing to their franchisees as well as buyers of their homes to that needs to be factored into things.

I don't believe there is a right or wrong path. Someone older with a lower risk tolerance may choose a franchise and someone younger my with less startup capital will probably try to bootstrap their business. I won't criticise HomeVestors or those who choose that path but I would need to see solid numbers before I would consider buying into it.

Thank you Brandon. I currently own a holiday apartment which was initially meant to be an investment but the mistake I made was taking my family to visit it and the quickly fell in love.

Thanks for the links to the articles.

In an ideal world I would do it the other way around too. I did a quick cost to benefit analysis and I would have to be there when I partner on a fix and flip. Writing out a check for a house and not having met your partner is just too frightening of a prospect for me. At least if my wholesale partner ends up not working out then I only lost the startup costs

Thank you Steven. The plan is to form partnerships with wholesalers instead of running the businesses myself. Legally, I am not allowed to work there so I would rather stay on the right side of the law. The location doesn't really matter to me as long as the partners are good.

There is a REIA in St. Paul and I plan on checking it out in June.

I have always had a passion for real estate investing and I am glad to finally be in a position to really make a go of it. I have a major constraint in that I only visit Minneapolis for a few months a year (hoping to make the move permanent in a year or 2) so starting a business and not being there to run it is a concern. The good news is I have unencumbered capital to invest

I have decided that given my situation it would be best if I sought out partnerships. The initial plan is to partner with budding wholesalers that don't have the capital to start out. My thinking is that the people I partner with get a chance to enter the industry with a good marketing budget and I get the opportunity to invest in a business at ground level. Also, these partnerships could be done in any state so I get more diversity of markets.

The second part of my strategy for now is to do joint ventures with fix and flippers, where I finance the project and they do the work. I only go back to Minneapolis in June so I'm hoping to network with fix and flip partners in the MSP area so long.

Thoughts and critique are most welcome,

Thanks for the warm welcome Mark. The market here can be good if you choose your areas wisely but wholesaling isn't a possibility here and closing on a house has to be done via attorneys which can take a few months. On the plus side there is a very good local real estate auction site where all the major banks put up bank owned properties, most of them in decent shape.