All Forum Posts by: Joseph Gozlan

Why not take the guessing out of the equation and get a couple of contractors to give you a bid?

I can't find the "getting started" page of the PRO section. that was the page after the payment and it had a welcome video and a 1.2GB audio file to download.

Can anyone provide a link to that page?

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Get it for free on Amazon, read it on your Kindle, iPad, Samsung, etc. 

Amazon offers a free app for all the devices (phones and tablets).

The Real Estate College Fund Book On Amazon

@Tomer Sapir if you have a market selected already (i.e. DFW / NYC / SF) then you can google to find the top commercial brokers in the metro and reach out to them. 

The will start emailing you property packages so you can start analyzing the data.

Good Luck

@Joel Owens you are right about the special rates for self pay patients. I've seen cases where they get better prices than the insured people.

The big risk though is in the area between the $300 dr. appointment for your cold and the $500K for a major even. 

If you were in a mild accident and the ER orders a CT scan, now you're looking down the barrel of a $25K bill. Not enough to wipe you out but will leave a painful dent in your wallet.

I agree though with the fact that obamacare is a mess and instead of trying to solve the problem they are throwing money at the symptoms. But that's a discussion for another forum... :-)

@Mohit Madaan had a good point about the phone number and message. An easy and free way to do that is to sign up to Google Voice. you get to pick a number, record a message and forward all calls to your phone if you want to be able to answer the number in real time!

@Patrick Britton here is my .02 on brokers:

1) Big name = Big expenses. all the big broker firms will cost you a lot to operate. just like any other aspect in life, you pay for the name. On the other hand, the big firms also provide systems such as websites, (some) leads and smoother transactions when it's time to close.

2) Keep in mind the big firms are franchisees. there could be more than one REMAX franchisee in your area and they might have different fee structures, talk to all of them,

3) RE is a negotiation business. Other than the national franchise fee, everything else is negotiable. Including desk fees...

4) As Fred suggested above, there are many independent brokers that has simpler and cheaper fees. You local realtors association can provide you with a list of all independent brokers in your area.

5) In 3-4 years you can bet your own broker license (if that's what you want) and things can be different then.

It all comes down to YOUR business plan. I recommend you open an excel sheet, build a column that has the numbers of houses you believe you can sell per month and a column for each broker that calculates your net from these transactions.

Run the numbers for the first 12-24 months and see where the break even points are (for example, selling 20 houses in REMAX might net you the same as selling 30 houses for KW).

Try to be honest and realistic with yourself about these numbers and remember that as an agent you are measured to higher standards than a wholesaler so some "gray area" methods one might have used in the past (not suggesting you did), one can no long do that w/o getting in trouble as a Realtor.

This is just one of the main reasons you hear experienced investors tell the new kids not to quit your job day one. 

Something has to pay the bills, put food on the table and yes, cover health costs.

Building your wealth by doing RE might take longer than expected.

Here is a quick example:

A mid-level SW engineer in the DFW area makes about 100K / year plus bonus (about 10%) plus 401K matching plus benefits (health, dental, vision) plus paid vacation days. if you sum it all up, about 140K total comp. 

That's about $11,600 / month (pre tax of course).

Let's try to figure out what it will take to make this amount in RE:

If you get $100 cashflow per door, that'd 116 units!

If you get $300/door/month that's over 38 units.

now, I'm over simplifying things but i'm trying to make a point, RE is a great investment tool (the best in my opinion) but if you want to make it a career there are different parameters to consider. One of them is health benefits.

I realized that in all that i forgot to answer your question :-)

Personally, I have a full time job that covers my family's benefits. 

I do know some self employed guys that were forced to use obamacare and pay over $3000/mo for a family of four.

@Anthony Warren Welcome to BP and thank you for your service!

I usually use 3%-4% as a safe number.