All Forum Posts by: Devin Deswert

Well Mark to be honest you and your years of "experience" didn't touch the OP. Sounds like you are in similar situation as if you wanted to buy a retail condo in a area of small office condos. Comps are going to be hard to get, and when you loosen up the search window for comps it becomes hard to compare apples to apple's. So if your the rambler in a area of victorians then of course your not going to be able to command the same price... well unless you have a aging in place stagnate population then sooner or later the ramblers go in favor as knees and backs fall out of favor. Have a RE pull comps the best they can, it's best to limit it to 3. Then find a way to present what the other homes have/don't have and their prices.... as I write this I realize I'm totally ripping off house hunters. Order a appraisal, if you are bank financing odds are you will be ordering a new one before you goto underwriting. But this is better for comparing finishes/lot sizes things like that. Finally a inspection. Which is pretty self explanatory. Combining those 3 things should give you a pretty good feeling on price, and give you something you can present to your seller in a way a selling agent would. As much as I would love RE to be a hard science there's a art to it and fluffed with some BS.

100% agree with Bryan. Sell the million dollar home and buy some rentals with that. Use the 200k to buy yourself a easy to care for single level condo.

A quick review of the website shows they are still free. I would imagine they are still in startup mode and investor funded. 

I would go with cozy.co. It's more geared towards landlords with features PayPal doesn't do. Prior to cozy when I self managed I had a tenet that preferred pay pal for whatever reason so I used it for them. 

Have you looked into grinding the top down? If it's just a bad finish that should be easy enough to re work. If it wasn't laid right on a compacted bed with rebar or remesh with stress joints then it's not worth saving. Might be tomorrow might be in 50 years but eventually it will break up and be more of a liability then a feature.

Interesting question and never thought of it until now, but now I have to. Seems like a easy enough problem depending on how you frame it. Things you need to need to know is number of unit's, vacancy rate and average time it's taken you to re lease a unit. So let's say you have 60 units and a 5% vacancy rate and takes 4 days of showings to get a tenet signed plus 2 days overseeing turnover work. That leaves you with 3 units vacant a month requiring 12 days of showings and 6 days of turnover work. So that's 18 days a month leasing units. Plus fill in work: Paying bill's, book keeping, continuing education, walk though inspections( twice a year per property but that's my preference not a rule). But of course input your own numbers and see what you get.

I would look into just plan old REIT's as a good place to start over a cloud funding platform. You can stash away small amounts get decent returns and if you use robinhood then you have no commission trades. This way you stay liquid and can cash out whenever the time is right for you and you don't have cash wrapped up in someone else's deal that may or may not preform.

With Fiverr you end up with a lot of clip art just twisted someway or over lapping other clip art. A business is also more then a logo and a local graphic designer can help with logo, letter heads, business cards and other branding. Also your current logo is a raster image you can see it on the edges around the type clear as day. End of the day a local graphic designer will help you long term with things you aren't even aware you need help with.

If I understand what you are saying, which I'm not sure I do honestly. But if I do you are missing the cost of the loan unless this hypothetical seller is floating you at 0% if not over 30 years your 90k loan comes to 64k in interest payments at current rates. Sure it some what counter acted with deductions and taking deprecation but not fully. My question is using your numbers and thought process is 100k over 30 years worth getting excited over? If you invested 10k in index funds you would likely get the same result. But again I only thing I get what you are asking.

I agree with Linda but the only problem is lack of job to get financed. But a owner occupied 2-4 unit will be your cheapest entry into investing. You need a foundation so first step is get a job and hold it. Not only will you need a job to get a loan but it needs to pay enough that combined with rental income to qualify. I suppose with some more money saved you could go the hard money route. But that's expensive money and with no experience in a market of tight margins the deck is greatly stacked against you. Second step would be to work your goal backwards, have you worked the numbers to see what's needed to have 8k a month in income? In the Portland market it will surprise you how much is needed if that's your goal. I started in the Portland market at 23( 9 years ago) finishing up a 4 year carpenter apprenticeship working full time going to school for finance in the evenings at PCC, Army national guard on the weekends. First property was owner occupied duplex VA loan and I put money down.