All Forum Posts by: Elijah Kerns

I'm looking for an investor friendly agent in the Champaign/Urbana area in Illinois. If anyone has a referral please let me know!

I have read multiple books on how to analyze properties. Most of them all say the same thing on how to get gross income minus expenses including vacancy, CapEx, repairs, taxes, insurance, mortgage payments, etc. The authors always claim that they can do this in a minutes time. However, I'm still unsure how to actually perform the math accurately, and efficiently. I feel that It's one or the other. I'll either spend hours analyzing one property by calling an agents to get projected rent and getting quotes for insurance. Or I can do it fast like the authors of these book but the numbers would be a shot in the dark. If anyone can give a detailed, step by step explanation on how they analyze properties and the time frame in which this takes I will be forever grateful.

thanks to everyone for all their input. Tremendous help!

So I'm about to enter my freshman year of college. I'm thinking about getting a property that I could live in one unit and rent the others out. However, an agent said one of his cardinal rules is to never rent out to family, or to live with tenants. Can someone shed light on the situation and give advice with personal experiences? It'd mean a lot, thanks!

I believe that somewhere I saw that one should only buy a property at 80% of what's it's worth. That's some great advice, but how do I know what the actual value of a property to see what 80% would be. I think I read this in the real estate investing book written by Brandon Turner. Not 100% sure though. Any advice on if the 80% rule is actually a thing or if I'm just making stuff up. All help appreciated.

Thanks, Roger. We are all just trying to learn the basics together. No intentions of sticking together for long just learning. our purpose is to get on the path of financial freedom. You bring up excellent points.

I have not but will today! Thanks a lot. @Brandon Turner

I'm currently reading a book written by Brandon Turner. His book is about rental properties and he got was the one who got me on this site. Three buddies and I are all going to get into the Real estate market soon. We hope to have our mentor, who is a multi-millionaire, help us through this process. We hope that he can buy the property and that we can buy equity in the house slowly. We are all in high school so getting a bank loan would be quite difficult so this is the route we are trying to take. Any tips or words of advice before trying to get our first property?