All Forum Posts by: Daniel Mohnkern

Thank you all so much for your responses.  I am very excited to have found this community and am looking forward to many shared experiences to come.  

Hi everyone.  I am very excited to have found Bigger Pockets.  

My name is Daniel Mohnkern and I am from Titusville, PA.  I have lived in Detroit, MI (former city ;-), Buffalo, NY, and the Chicago, IL area before settling down in this quaint town.  

Having grown up in a rather poor family, and barely learning how to balance a checkbook in my high school, I quickly decided, shortly after marriage, that it was well past time to change my family tree.  In my distress, I responded to a radio commercial for a Wade Cook Stock Market Institute Trading seminar in 1999 and began my long dive into the world of making money outside of a "job".  I immediately started making and losing money in the stock market and, wanting to educate myself further, accidentally chose to read Robert Kiyosaki's THIRD book, "What the Rich Invest In That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not".  I thought it was going to be on the stock market.  Boy was I wrong.  I was a little disappointed until I started getting the big picture about Real Estate and Business.  Upon finishing that book, I quickly bought his first 2 books and was immediately hooked.

My challenge was that I wanted to know everything before getting in.  I don't know why I treated it differently than the stock market but I did.  I read DOZENS of books, went to several seminars, hired coaches, and wasted much money I could have used on deals.  I learned a lot of information but had nothing to show for it except for what was in my head.

Finally, in 2006, I used my tax refund to buy a duplex that has long term tenants who never do anything wrong.  It didn't take long to fall in love with rentals.  Don't worry, I know that one was probably very lucky.

I found Bigger Pockets by listening to various podcasts and hearing it mentioned as the premier podcast for those interested in real estate.  Who said that?  None other than Dan Miller on "48 Days".  I loved his podcast and followed his advice.  Boy am I glad I did.  I started on the very first one and have not stopped listening since.  I listen to them on my "BeyondPod" App while I'm driving around the country for my job (a Charter bus driver).

Once I found the Bigger Pockets site, I instantly fell in love with it.  I refused to waste my time on Facebook and Twitter because I saw little value in posting about arbitrary things that no one really cared about.  Bigger Pockets is so much more than that.  I can finally get to know people who are of like minds.  I can learn, network, socialize, and eat, sleep, and drink REAL ESTATE.  

I am about multi-unit rentals and possibly commercial real estate in the near future.  It would only make sense to be willing to wholesale here and there as well while finding what's right for me.  I really look forward to connecting with others, sharing experiences, learning, and, when I can, teaching, networking, and helping others here in this great community.   Talk to you soon!

Daniel Mohnkern

@ James Kendrick

The whole "due on sale" clause thing is what has kept me from transferring for years now, but recently I was listening to a BP podcast from July 25, 2013 in which Dave Van Horn laughed and said that the clause is a joke.  He said that the banks don't really care about the clause (in his experience) as long as they are still being paid.  After all, why should they want to bother with a foreclosure process when someone else is paying them?  I can relate.  Why would I want to kick a tenant out because his mother or brother started sending me checks in stead of him?

I was encouraged by that podcast and was intending to go ahead with my transfer for asset protection purposes.  Are you saying that you have a contrary experience with this situation?

I am in PA and, from what I have learned, you may have a battle in front of you.  As I understand it, in PA you have a lease whether you think you do or not.  I bought a property with tenants who are still there 9 years later (good tenants).  I have however looked into the process a little just in case.  What I learned was that, in PA, if you have no written lease, then you have an "understood" month to month lease as far as the legality of it.  If we want to evict someone, we must give 30 days written notice (registered mail for proof).  If they decide not to go, the battle before a magistrate would ensue after that 30 days was up.  

In my opinion, you should do what was suggested.  Raise the rent to the "after repair" level and let them know that you are going to signed leases from now on.  If they seem like they are fine with paying the higher rent then you can keep them and wait on the rehab or you can give them another incentive to move if you'd rather.  If that were the case, I would make the lease more interesting; something like- make them sign a 10 year lease rather than 2 with the rent going up by 10% per year with a massive "fine" for breaking the lease early.  They either sign that lease and you make a killing for your inconvenience or they refuse to sign it and then you give them their 30 days and are back in the original scenario.  At least you have the chance of making substantially more for free.

When I sought financing on my first deal I had some of the same issues.  When I tried to get financing from a "large" bank (one of the major chains) it was pretty much impossible.  The reason was because the people in those banks are more or less just robots computing numbers and have no freedom to be real people solving real people's needs.  I found more luck at a credit union in town and a small regional bank with people who lived more on our planet.

If I remember correctly, I believe that my credit score was only around 640 at the time (which worried me) and I only had 10% to put down (this was in 2006).  I am pretty sure that if I just went in there asking for money for an investment property, they might have given me a terse answer and sent me on my way.   Mostly because of my fear of being a newbie and my not-so-stellar credit score, I tried to be as professional as possible to take up the slack.  A few years prior, my family purchased Rich Dad Poor Dad's game, Cashflow 101, and I had become pretty good at it.  I decided to produce a similar profit/loss statement on the prospective duplex so I could somehow communicate with the lender that I understood the jargon and that I had taken into account all the expenses that I could foresee.

I expressed my (albeit limited, yet hyped) understanding of things financial by nonchalantly quoting phrases from Rich Dad Poor Dad.  When she asked me to list my assets, I asked her if she wanted me to list MY assets (the things that made me money) or the BANKS assets (the things that made THEM money (i.e. my house, my car, etc.)).  After telling me that I was one of the only people she knew that understood the difference(thank you, Robert Kiyosaki), she had me list it all.  We had a good discussion about cash flow and debt/income ratio and I told her all about Robert Kiyosaki's books and game and how it changed my life financially.  She thanked me for telling me about all of that and that she wanted to look into it for her own finances.

In the end, she ended up pulling some strings, coming up with creative solutions, and really working some magic to make it happen.  I firmly believe that the biggest reason for that was because I came to the table with an understanding of the jargon.  I also believe that a big reason was because I treated her like a friend.  I resisted the urge to show my lack of confidence and I instead presented the person I WANTED to be.  Even though I was scared out of my mind, I was also super excited about the money I knew I was going to make.  I wanted all of that to take a second seat to the presentation of myself as a friend who was a knowledgeable real estate investor.  Fake it till ya make it?  Perhaps a little.

I also realized that the person working at the bank was just another person who had a job.  She was a real person who had many of the same thoughts and concerns as I had.  I wanted to treat that person right.  If the person sees someone who is nervous and lacks confidence, they will think you have no clue what you're doing.  If they see someone who is pompous and arrogant, they will not want to help you either.  I came to the table wanting to help the lender on both a personal level and a professional level.  This helped me to realize my importance in the process.  I was needed to help the loan officer to be able to do her job (making the bank money by lending) and I was also needed to be kind and friendly to a person doing her job.  We should be that way regardless of whether or not there is something in it for us, but it really does help.  We attract who we are; not who we want.  

All of that to say this, find a local or regional lender who has the power to make decisions on more than a mathematical formula.   Once you have found one like that, make a friend out of them while living confidently and sharing what you know in a helpful and friendly manner.  Learn the jargon and understand it.  Help the person on both a personal and professional level.  Make them WANT to help you back.  The way we treat people will ALWAYS come back around to us eventually.

That is so inspirational.  Thank you for sharing that.  And for being willing to share info about where you go.

What?  Is there a game today?  I work more on the weekends than on the weekdays.  Truth is, I have not watched a sports game since 1995.  I am addicted to working and learning.