All Forum Posts by: Fred Conway

Hey Lance, what part of Dallas? I used to live in Addison and Richardson. Most people will tell you to stay away from anything with an HOA. There's alot of uncertainty and loss of control once you start getting into condos/townhouses. Me personally, i dont care as long as the numbers work. I also dont have near the experience as alot of the wise people on BP. Some of the people have done 100 or more deals and stear clear of anything with an HOA. Josh Dorkin is pretty clear on his stance against HOAs.

I think we're in between the climb and peak, prices are pretty stable and will appreciate slowly. With that being said, i think there's an X factor that may or may not have a huge impact on the housing market and that's the stock market. The stock market is insanely high and volatile. If the stock market crashes, i think 1 of 2 things could happen. First is we have a case of 2008 all over again, minus the terrible loans, so people are looking to get out of their homes because they can no longer afford them. The other is people want to  hold on to their homes after losing much of the value of their 401ks. This could also lead to people looking to get as much money for their house as they can, sell and downsize. Again, i don't have any facts to back up the housing market, just a guess, but if you look at the stock market, there will be a correction sooner rather than later.

From what I know, destin is a very hot rental market in the summer/spring break, so basically from may-august, you wont have a problem renting it out as a vacation rental. Also, there's an air force base in pensacola, which is about an hour away from destin, which might be a good opportunity for them when they leave to rent to other families at the base.

50k a yr is pretty easy to live on as a single guy without kids. 

Saw the same thing. 8 months ago he said he quit his job, sounds weird. So does he have a job or not? I dont care who you are, if you're making 1k a day, you can quit your 50k a yr job. If I were making 1k a day, I'd worry about real estate when the well runs dry and pay cash for houses. Realistically, you could buy and hold 100k houses every 4 months, clear 1k a month in profit. If it last 2 years, you've got 8 paid for houses making 8k a month. Not bad. If you want to buy more or need the cash, refinance or sell.

 I think the issue is that nobody knows what a stock is going to do. If you bought a stock like sony 10 yrs ago, u still havent made your money back. With Apple, you could buy in today, but how much higher is it going to go? Same thing with Tesla or Amazon? How much higher can they go because you're 1 wrong move away from losing 30% of your investment. If your so confident in the stock market, theres really no reason to invest in real estate. With real estate, you typically have a solid idea of how its going to perform. In the 80s, the average house cost 50k, today the average US home is 210k. If all you did was pay off your mortgage, you just made 150k. Now imagine having bought 10 houses in the 80s for 50k and only putting 10% down while having renters pay you cash every month. You just made 2.1 million on a 50k investment. Its easy to say if you just pick the right stock, but theres alot of circuit city, enron and AIGs out there that people lost their life savings on. 

How do you feel military renters compare to a typical single family tenant in regards to paying on time, care of the property and maintenance issues? Do they typically prefer condos because of the low maintenance or SFH?

This is a question I have thought about lately and was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the matter. Clearly you need cash to buy a food franchise, specifically fast food, so this question wouldn't apply to what to do with anything around 100k, most require 500k plus. Some I have had in mind are McDonalds, Sonic and Zaxbys. If you had a 1 million in cash, would you invest in a fast food franchise? The average McDonalds makes around 250k in profit per yr and 2.5 million investment. The average subway makes between 80-120k in profit per yr and around 250k investment. 

For those that say this type of business can be too time consuming, you're right but real estate can be as well. I actually know someone who owns around 65 fast food chains and he took 4 years off of work with the exception of an occasional phone call. 4 years! This while making over 5 mil a year.

So would you invest? Why or why not?