All Forum Posts by: Daniel Vineis

Hey Andy one of the keys to profitability as a landlord is quick turn over. if you where renting your unit out for $2,000 a month and waited 3 months to get someone in. The lose in rent would be equivalent to having rented it out for $1,500 a month for a year. I am not saying to drop it $500 just to get someone in. You would run into many issues with raising rent etc. but this is how a look at most of my rentals. I normally list them with a tenant inside and if I cant get what I want after 2 weeks Ill drop the rent a little to get someone in. I would also recommend a 6 month lease so you are not running into this same situation year after year. Most tenant will be fine with this as long as you explain your reasoning.

Hey Jeanette welcome to BP. I Live in New Jersey and invest here and in NC. I invest in in NC. Good luck!

Hey Ashley So I would invest in a software like prop stream. you can make a list of landlords pretty easily with a software like that. Then take that data and skip trace it for numbers email etc. Give them all a call and see if they are willing to sell and if not are they in the market to buy. If your not ready to spend money on a software you can use tax records. When you look them up make sure the owner isn't a LLC and that there primary address is not the same as the property you where looking at. This almost always means they are a land lord or the property is currently vacant and likely to sell soon. One more tip hit town homes and condo communities in the area. I have a listing in Lawrence square Lawrence and ravens crest in Plainsboro right now. About half the people I talk to are investors looking in that area. One last tip look at homes for rent on Zillow. Then get inContact with the owner since there is know doubt they are a landlord. If you have any questions shoot me a message and I can walk you through the process. Good luck!

So meet ups are great but in my experience %60-%80 of the people attending have some kind of real estate related service they are offering. Which is fine But unless your at a meet up specifically for out of state investing most of those connections you make will not help you achieve your goal. As for attending a meet up out of state I don't think that would be your highest and best use of your time and resources. Read David greens book on out of state investing. Then apply his methods of interviewing and start building your core four in the area your interested in. If you do this well just leverage those connections to get more. Ask your realtor or whom ever is finding you deals if they have an investor they routinely work with that would be willing to talk with you. I do this for my realtor in the Carolinas all the time. To sum it up I would rather you pour your time into improving your interviewing skills and developing your core four. If you do this well they will provide you with almost all the connections you need to get started. Then as you do more business usful people will just naturally come into your life. As an out of state landlord I can tell you as soon as you purchase a property out of state you will be on every wholesalers list to call. Whenever they do dont hang out just ask to be put on there buyers list. Small things like that over time will get you great exposure to deals with minimal effort.

So if your living for free now it will be very unlikely you will find a house hack that can match your current monthly living expense. There are only a few scenarios that would make sense for you to house hack. The first scenario is that your current living situation has a timeline on it and your going to have to move anyway. The second scenario would be if you didn't have enough capital to invest in real estate the traditional way and wanted to start to build a portfolio. You have 80K liquid depending on the property type you can put 15% down on a investment property. So you can defiantly do a traditional purchase. That would be my recommendation is to buy an investment property and remain where you are. There are a few great and cheap market in the Carolinas I invest in. Purchase price would be around $150,000-220,000. You could spread that 80K over a couple deals down there.

Hey max welcome to Jersey. For meet ups if you look on BP under events & meetups you can find them. I also us Meetup.com and Eventbrite. Look threw all of those and you will most definitely find a few.

I don't know much about California so I cant touch on that. But if you are doing AirBNB just make sure its in a seasoned market that wont have some random policy change that makes it to where you can not use the unit as a short term rental anymore. Also underwrite the property as a long term rental as well. Just to be safe if you had to pivot. When it comes to out of state investing unless you are doing the construction yourself. It does not matter if you invest in Vegas or Florida the process will be the same. You're going to call your contractor. Then get photos and get third party verification that everything was done right prior to making your final payment to the contractor. I would rather you focus on finding a market that gives you the highest probability of achieving your goals. Rather then focusing on a market because it is closer in proximity to you. Then focus on improving your interviewing skills to help you build a solid team on the ground wherever you do choose to invest. David greens book on out of state investing is great. I more or less copy and pasted his interviewing process for property managers and used that to interview them. With a few little alterations. Lastly if your not sold on any market yet I have always done very well in and enjoyed military markets. We can connect and go over the pros and cons of investing in one if you would like. Good luck you got this!

Hey Casi hope your doing well. One of the most important things you can do is set expectations. If someone is looking for the perfect BRRR deal or for $100,000 flip its very hard to find this on the MLS. Unless you have consistent access to off market deal you will probably be wasting your time with this kind of investor. What I really look for in a agent is can they confirm or deny my ARV and rent estimate and explain why. Sometimes ill say a ARV that is almost certainly unattainable to make sure I am getting accurate feed back rather then someone just telling me what I want to hear. Second most important thing is can they tell me the quality of tenant I will be renting to. The last major thing I look for is work ethic. Will you go view a property for me that there is a good chance we don't get. Will you check on a property I'm currently doing construction on. Will you answer my calls or get back to me promptly. When I go into a market I typically build relationships with wholesalers and do my own direct to seller marketing. So I don't really need lead flow from an agent I need more of there knowledge and connections in the area. If Someone came to you and needed you to funnel them deals having that expectation talk is super important because not every investor needs the same return. So to sum it up identify the type of investor you would want to work with and depending on who you choose to work with there needs will differ.

In new jersey you can find cash flow but it is tricky and a lot of the time you have to get creative and really optimize the property. I think you have the right idea with investing in train stations and good areas in NJ. Your biggest potential obstacle in NJ is your tenant since it is a Tenant friends state. So your tenant pool is extremely important if not the most important thing to look at when investing in NJ. I invest out of state as well Mostly in NC. But to sum it all up my new jersey properties where slightly out preformed by my out of state properties and it took longer for me to really be able to enjoy true cashflow from my NJ properties. One Major thing to consider is this. In most of my cash flow markets I would have to buy 3-5 properties to get the same value as one in NJ. At first this sounds like a good thing because its a cheaper entry level but the more you own the more complicated life can get. Provided that both markets are appreciating at the same pace I would rather own one $600,000 duplex then three $200,000 ones. That is strictly from a scalability stain point. There are pros and cons to having more units or less units.

Hey Amanda hope your doing well. I invest in a few different states and I'm a realtor in new jersey. If my clients are over the age of 55 there is about a 50% chance they are moving out of state to retire so I am interview other agents pretty much every week. I have found this process eliminates all the bad eggs before you even get to the interview. Step 1 look at the area your interested in and pic the 12 agents try and do 6-8 teams and 4-6 single agents if possible. Pick them based of production there bio back group etc. My personal favorite production level are single agents doing between 18-40 deals a year that have a investment or work a decent amount of investors. step 2 at 9 AM on a weekday send out a text to each of them explaining what your looking to do and asking to set up a time to talk. If they do not respond within a hour they don't get the interview. this will eliminate about half of the 12. step 3 When you ask to set up a time to talk you say you will be the one calling them. When the time for the call comes around you do not call them. If they reach out to you in a timely manor asking about the missed appointment give them a call and congratulate them on passing 90% of the interview. This will almost always take those 12 top producers down to 2-4. Interview these 4 ask questions like what do you do to get listings can I make offers on your up and coming inventor prior to going on market etc. Then just go with the one that feel right. The reason I do this complicated interview process is because you want someone that knows what they are doing. Secondly you want someone that will not ghost you because they are just to busy with easier business. lastly you want someone that acknowledges its there job it stay in contact with you and help you along down the path of purchasing not the other way around. Anyone can answer a question but this pre interview interview shows you if they have these qualities with out even having to ask and they are the most important qualities in my opinion a realtor can have. Then you actually dive into there knowledge of the area investing etc.