All Forum Posts by: Eran Withana

Hi BP Community,

I’m posting to seek your recommendations and insights on a few topics that I’m currently exploring:

• SDIRA Custodians
• CPA specialized in REI and W2 Income
• Investments beyond the first few single-family properties
• Syndications
• Legal Structures for REI

While I have done some research online, I would greatly appreciate hearing from this community. Your personal experiences and suggestions would be incredibly helpful.

If you have any recommendations or are a professional in any of these fields, I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to comment or connect with me directly.

Thank you so much for your time and assistance!

Warm regards,

Eran

Quote from @Katie Balatbat:

@Eran Withana I have referrals in San Diego if you're willing to work remotely.

 @Katie Balatbat please do share those with me. I'm also looking for someone (attorney) who understands how to setup structures (LLCs, Land Trusts, etc) to better formalize and achieve anonymity as much as possible. Since you are marked as an attorney, are you in this field?

Hi,

I have four out-of-state properties and W2 income. Really appreciate if someone can recommend a CPA who understands REIs, s-corps and working with W2 income individuals. 

Thanks in advance

@Sammy Lyon can you please share the contact info with me as well?

Having owned few properties and doing couple of refinances, I totally get this. But when they say "we standby with our inspectors" even when there is evidence to prove otherwise, thats not the proper way to handle it especially if they want to stay unbiased. And, more importantly, when remote investors like us depend on the information on their site, if those are not binding or trustworthy, how can we make informed decisions? The other alternative would be to take everything on the site with a grain of salt and do our independent research - but this is not scalable. 

yes - this is what I did (asking for an updated inspection) which they rejected. They and the seller also rejected to even look at the structural issues that was mentioned in the report.

The funny thing is, soon after I dropped out from that property, they immediately re-listed it and sold it. Not sure whether they made any modifications requested but if not, I feel bad for whoever bought it. 

Yep - this is what I learned from this experience. Roofstock is good for getting a preliminary list of properties and generating leads. After that, we have to do a significant amount of due diligence before going ahead with the properties since apparently we can not really trust some of the reports in there. 

Since there are few threads requesting for roofstock experience, decided to share my not-so-good experience with them. 

Disclaimer: I might still work with them in the future, but definitely will not be my first or second choice to pick properties from them. 

First Property

I did some research on few properties and finally found a one in Minnesota (IIRC). The numbers looked good and roofstock had all the valuation reports and everything else marked as green. What could go wrong, right? But thankfully, I went through every line in the property inspection report and noticed that under "Basement has water damage" marked as Yes. I was happy, since I found it, and furious at the same time. How could they mark all green for a property with basement water damage. 

Second Property

I thought this was a one time mistake and then worked with one of their agents to identify another property in Indianapolis. Again, the numbers looked good and I submitted an offer. It got accepted and from that moment on, Roofstock assigned me an agent who was very responsive and dynamic (kudos to that). I carefully looked at the property inspection report and the images and every line item looked good and marked green. 

I then engaged my lender and they sent someone to do an inspection/valuation. This is where things started to go south. The property assessor was obviously a tough guy and had highlighted every little thing as a disaster. But ... he found cracks on the wall (with images), broken windows, fences, structural issues in the kitchen which raised lender's and my eyebrows. How did Roofstock missed these? We then contacted Roofstock and their managers apparently had said they standby with *their* property inspection report. How can they standby on their report when the pictures were showing otherwise. I had a bit of rough time convincing them and finally decided to give up. 

I did more research and found out that Roofstock bought this property for way less, spent few thousand $$ to renovate it and had added about 50-60% markup on the price. This was also obvious when the lender's property assessment came in low. 

Summary

I had two consecutive bad experiences with them. One of the key traits I rely on REI is trust and they lost it with me by not only putting false information on their website and valuation report AND standing by those erroneous reports. How can I trust them going forward especially when I'm buying a remote property without being able to rely on the provided reports.

Hence, I decided to not to work with them at least for sometime because I don't want to spend a lot of time going through each and every item myself and not relying on the info they are providing. 

This could be a one time thing for me but I warn everyone of you to spent extra time verifying the information they are providing and not solely rely on the numbers. 

Roofstock still provides a very good property buying experience - no question on that. But they need to spend more time on making their reports on properties more realistic and build trust with the buyers. 

Hope this helps someone. 

what are the pros and cons of holding rental properties under a revocable family trust with everything else in that trust? I have two properties currently under my name and wondering whether i should bring those under my family trust. Or, are there better ways to hold these properties? (planning to listen to http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2015/02/12/bp-podcast-109 today)

This is awesome - thanks everyone for providing your inputs and helping a fellow colleague. 

The CPA I mentioned in the original post requested me to pay half the price even before the initial consultation - so I don't even have a chance to evaluate them. 

As @Jake Hottenrott mentioned I want to look for value and not necessarily price - but at the same time I don't want to blindly pay $$ upfront. 

I think what I will do is, as some of you already mentioned

1. reach out to some here who offered to help

2. read the tax forum and find CPAs that I think has provided good guidelines and see whether I can get an initial consultation with them

I know they can add value to my situation but unless I believe they can add long term value that will justify my payment, I'm not willing to commit to them. 

I will report here once I decide what to do. Thanks again for providing feedback. 

If you know a good CPA that knows enough about REI, please send me the details directly. Thanks in advance

I listened to Amanda Han in BP podcast and also read "Tax Free Wealth" by Tom Wheelwright. I just signed contracts for my first two rental properties in OK and LA. I also have W-2 income. 

I was trying to find a CPA and still struggling to find a good one that fit my needs. There are places famous for REI that charge over $5-10k just for planning and I'm not sure whether I'm there yet. The other CPAs that I talked to, I don't know whether they know enough about REI. Hence, wondering how others find their CPAs.

I also understand that the cost also reflect what you get and at the same time don't wanna pay too much. Any suggestions on how I should find someone? Do you think I can do this myself with Turbotax?