All Forum Posts by: Ethan Lahav

It really depends on the asset type you're looking at. 

For Multifamily, Yardi is actually better than co-star in my opinion but is as expensive. That said, for multifamily, you don't need any of these tools for rent comps. Just go to apartments.com apartmentsguide.com rentpath.com etc. and search the area and you'll see all the asking rents in the neighborhood. 

For other asset classes in commercial, you'll have to get Costar or CRExi, I don't know of any free resource. 

Hi @Ethan Lahav,

I think your question is missing something... I'm confused because ideally, you have a strategy and target what you're going after. When you ask how do you know what's better (rental vs flip) that makes me think you have a property that maybe you inherited or something, and you're trying to figure out what to do with it.

I looked at your profile, but you didn't have any info. Can you let us know your strategy or what you want long-term?

@Sabrina Sanchez talked about the speed of returns, faster for flips but longer for rentals. 

Like @Nathan Gesner said, flipping is a job, but long-term rentals are about cashflow. 

@Jim Pellerin talked about how you can use SFH flips to build up funds to get into multifamily.

That's all good stuff...

I'm curious though, what do you want from real estate investing? Are you considering getting into flipping or buy-and-hold? 

Rene G

Math...with $$$$ in front, and not %%%% behind. REI is nothing more than that...that's why it's called "investing". If it was about buying properties, it would be called "collecting".

Assuming a property that is good for both, one simple way (the best way) to see which is best is based on comparing the potential profit from a flip to how many years it would take for the potential cumulative CF to equal that potential profit. Part of this is also seeing how long it takes for the cumulative CF to equal what you paid for the property. Remember, the only cost to the REI is the cash that comes out of their pocket...the rest of the "total" cost, is paid by the tenant, so the cumulative CF must recover that cash outlay to be come profitable. The shorter the time period the better. It amazes me how many times I see REI OK with a property that has negative CF (meaning the cost of that property keeps adding up, and profit never happens), or the payback period to cash recovery hovers close to 20-30 years...then they justify it by saying the property will appreciate over that time period, so that's OK. No it isn't. If it was, how many of them could you afford to carry. Worse, how much exponential profit are you losing from that negative CF that should have been invested in other properties? I don't care how much a property appreciates, it can never catch up to those "exponential" losses. Math doesn't lie...unless you're using percentages that is.