All Forum Posts by: Elliot Vann

Like everything else...It depends! Some things even an amateur who never read a real estate book and doesn’t know what amortization can give an opinion on or make an educated guess. In matter of fact sometimes it’s the outside and out of the box position that affords a perspective that could’ve been overlooked by someone who “already knows everything.” Obviously, more complicated questions and more advanced issues an amateur wouldn’t even be able to pretend like he knew what he was talking about. I once heard from someone who owns a couple big malls, “a smart man is someone who hears all the opinions and then decides for himself” I just look at the whole picture. An active profile with a lot of posts probably tells you something. However, if its something which makes sense to me I won’t discount it no matter how inactive the person is.

Welcome! It’s great to see action from New Jersey. I’m would love to hear where you plan on investing. This is a tough state for beginner investors.

Yea but how is it gonna go down in court? “-He signed a lease, missed four months of payments, was dealing drugs out of his apartment, and disrupting the peace of the building.” -“Yea, but I found a post on BiggerPockets saying he was happy to finally be getting rid of that filthy tenant” Hmmmm....you don’t say.... Although, depends on what class building. If you really have an issue in a higher class building I guess they can give you a bad reputation. If they’re putting out lies about a landlord they can’t always be there to present the “truth.”

Also, remember people are paying a premium to live there. So the only money people are making is investors who are developing skyscrapers or conservative 4% cap rate purchases.

Yea NY is crazy! Probably even to House hack with an FHA loan would be like $30,000. I would tell you to consider NJ. Right outside NY there are some areas that have much cheaper housing and you could totally find deals. I looked at some deals with 20% cash on cash ROI and $100 a unit cash flow. Of course, those are not such nice neighborhoods, but you get what you pay for. Good Luck!

Wow! I didn’t get a chance to go through the article yet. But definitely a major point for me to think about. I appreciate you bumping the thread with a reply. Personally, I do property management in a building where we have to deal with evictions all the time. Remember, evictions is bad for BOTH the landlord and the tenant. As a landlord you want a tenant who pays rent NOT one that costs hundreds in lawyer fees. You don’t want to “kick a tenant out” unfortunately, sometimes we’re forced to evict them. That being said I wouldn’t want my tenants knowing how to track me down through BiggerPockets. There should be a degree of separation. Those are my thoughts anyway. Great topic.

Yea definitely agree it’s gonna be hard to find on the MLS but you may very well find in the suburbs. In a place like DFW people are factoring a lot of appreciation. But a lot of appreciation very quickly sounds like a housing bubble to me, when it pops you’ll have your MLS listings again that make good money. But hey there’s always a deal to be had, Good Luck!

Thank you for keeping our country safe! Belated welcome to the community. What’s so great about BiggerPockets is we acknowledge that we were all once beginners and we are all in this together. Good Luck on a great deal for a house hack!

Just to be clear you mean your planning on selling your current house and then buying a new duplex? Depends on your price range and your financing options. Assuming you put 20% down of $200,000 your looking at about 45k for down payment and closing costs leaving 38k for renovations which should be plenty.

Hey, so I did a quick search and I found a commercial laundry company in your state. It doesn’t look like they do the managing but they are definitely the ones who will know who does and how you could do it yourself. good luck! http://www.washingtonautomated.com/about-us.aspx