All Forum Posts by: David Grabiner

If you are just seeing this post don't be fooled by the lack of replies, there is going to be a good amount of people there. If you are serious about investing in Chattanooga you have to be at this event every month! Thanks Kelly for organizing it.

Hope to see you all there next Thursday.

Cozy is good for what it does basically rent collections and very very basic accounting. When I started I used Cozy, Zillow for listings, and excel spreadsheets for book keeping, and google voice/hangouts dialer to communicate. But after I passed 24 units I needed something with everything in the same place. So I switched to Buildium. It’s not free like all the others but it is worth it for sure when you self manage a good amount of units. 

What kind of investing are you looking to do? How much time and what schedule would you be free? What are you hoping to learn from the experience? What kind of skills or experience do you have already that could be useful to a seasoned investor? what kind of day kind of day job do you currently have and would it allow for a flexible schedule?

Welcome to bigger pockets. About five years ago I was reading Mr money mustache and decided I wanted to FIRE earlier than index funds would allow. I was also living overseas and decided to invest in multi family properties in Chattanooga. Best decision ever, it has worked out better than expected. 

The market has changed some so it will be a little more difficult for you to get the same kind of deals i got back then but with creativity and determination you can make it work. 

As an investor I never use a buyers agent. I always go straight to the listing agent or whoever brought me the deal. This way I get off market deals from all the agents I have worked with in the past because they know I'm serious and I perform on all my offers. Also they know they will get twice the commission since I never have my own agent. I think if you tried to specialize in being an buyers agent for investors you probably would get a bunch of newbie investors who would take up a lot of your time and won't be buying that much or that large of a properties. 

If you are confident about finding deals and managing them and all you need is money, why not start with friends and family? You will probably find that most seasoned investors expect to get a much higher return than non investors. For example if you have a long term buy and hold multi family deal that you will do all the management of what kind of annual return will I get on the money invested? I probably wouldn’t be interested unless my money was making around a 20% return. 

I think you might have more success getting a seasoned investor partner if you put up the money.

I will be there. Hope to see everyone there.

Thanks Kelly for organizing it.

@John Stewart just contact any bank and ask for their residential loan person. Not their commercial loan department. As if you are buying a house to live in it but in this case you tell them it will be non owner occupied. Now you will have to put it in your name you won’t be able to put it in the name of an llc, but if you have sufficient credit and income every bank should have this product. Even my State Farm agent (misty Allen)  can offer this product.