All Forum Posts by: Matt Yates

Your LLC is a closely held investment and the way to report that to banks for your personal financial statements is assets minus liabilities, which means it only shows on the asset side of your personal financial statement. For instance, if your LLC, "ABC LLC", has $2MM in assets and $1MM in debt, you should report an asset of $1MM for "ABC LLC" on your personal assets when applying for a personal loan. If asked, you should disclose your guaranty of the LLC debt, but if it's not asked, you don't have to provide that info.

As a small business, you and the business are inseparable, so until your business grows to a point that it produces more income than your wages, underwriters will underwrite to your personally rather than the business, unfortunately.

Just finished The Devil in the Grove (non real estate but awesome). Finishing Stalingrad and How to Win Friends and Influence People. On my list is the E-myth, J Scott's flipping book, and Capital in the 21st Century.

I have experience from the underwriting side for the bank if that can help.

I'm interested in single-family rentals, but right now my search is mainly limited to craigslist and the MLS. I'm not actively searching, mostly keeping an eye out on the market until later this summer when I will be able to make my first deal happen. There's a couple of properties on there that are over 120 days old (one of which is over 6 months).

For those more experienced in the RE game, what are the main reasons for these listings becoming stale? I understand each situation's different, but what is the most common reason? What are the major "hidden" things wrong with these properties that might be contributing?

I'm not even talking about pie in the sky listing prices with owner unwilling to budge. Each of these properties has had regular price decreases, so needles to say my curiosity is piqued.

Right now my fantasy deal is my first one, whatever that may be! Hopefully, I'll have it out of the way by the end of the summer. Until then, I'll take one of each of Brandon's condos........

I would personally kill to find a buy and hold rental that is currently being rented out for greater than 2% of my all in costs. I'm searching for one myself in my area and it's tough to find them at 1.5% right now. Just my .02.

I was more or less hoping to spark a discussion around better ways to go about managing this situation, if it's possible, from experienced agents/investors. Also, how much does this sort of situation hinder sales prices (impossible to quantify, I'm sure)?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/real-estate-agent-mails-angry-letter-to-older-couple-who-parks-on-their-own-lawn-200352545.html

I think the agent went about this all wrong, luckily he/she stayed anonymous (for now). If it's revealed who the agent is, I imagine it wouldn't be good for business. Thoughts?

I would imagine with the downtrend in mortgage volume recently that you would have lenders knocking down your door. Good luck.

What's your personal housing situation? I ask, because, I can pretty much do just about anything around the house after 7 years of owning my own home. Obviously, I'm not talking about HVAC or electrical work here, but I've become pretty handy at putting in hardwood (bamboo) on both a slab (free floating, not glued) and upstairs where I nailed them in to the sub floor. I've also put in floor tile and a kitchen backsplash and various other things. The best resource for me was the Internet and Youtube. There are so many DIY channels on Youtube, with their own off-channel websites with step by step guides. http://www.palatinremodeling.com/top-10-diy-channels-on-youtube/

I agree that hiring things out is probably a better use of one's time as an investor than doing it yourself, but I'm of the same mind as you to try to do some of this stuff at first because I'm going to do a more traditional buy and hold pattern where I won't be able to acquire properties very rapidly, so it's not like I'd be missing out on deals by undertaking certain repairs/improvements myself.

My last caveat, I would be sure to research the permit requirements and building codes before undertaking anything more than replacing a door knob because I know Massachusetts and other northern states have very particular requirements on things you would never think you would need a permit for.