All Forum Posts by: Gideon Sylvan

Sorry, couldn't help myself.  Didn't mean to troll.  I'm not old enough to say if my plan is sustainable, but I automatically move a set amount of money out of my checking account every month into an investing account.  When the account is large enough for another property, I make offers until one is accepted and passes inspection.  Historically, I've been investing in low income, inexpensive houses because they're affordable enough that I can buy them with regularity and they provide strong cash flow.  Now that I'm more comfortable with real estate investing, I'm working on setting up a jointly owned remodeling syndicate and using the dividends to buy personal rentals at a faster pace. 

Could I ask what the purpose of the question is?  Seeing as you're a wholesaler, I'm going to make a guess that you're struggling with whether or not you should say you're a cash buyer.  But you don't have to say you're a cash buyer to be in the same class; you write "cash offers."  In this industry, a cash offer colloquially means without a financing addendum, which is generally how a wholesale offer is written.  Whether you sell to a hard money buyer or a literal cash buyer, a financing addendum is not needed, ergo it's a "cash offer."

If the majority of your offers are not rejected, you're offering too much.  Either you have to make low ball offers or you have to compete with other investors on already well priced listings.  So the fact that your offer was rejected suggests you are doing things right.

Before making an offer though (even a text message one), I would recommend running through the numbers in more detail over using a __% rule.  After all, this is what your competition is doing.  If it was to be a flip, the numbers would look something like...

$265,000 - $15,900 (commissions)* - $5,300ish (closing costs) - $4,700ish (excise tax) - $3,000ish (holding costs) - $20,000ish (repairs, I'm believe your first deal will only cost $10K since most cost around $30K) - $6,000ish (acquisition costs including legal for off market) = $216,100 without surprises.  Add in the hard money and you're looking at approximately $9,000 more; plus a safer rehab budget of $30,000 and you're number goes down to $196,000.

So if you're confident in your ARV and ability to stay under $30,000 for the rehab, you're likely safe to offer $170,000-$180,000 (i.e. what @Bill Jacobsen said #nailedit).

*without using an agent, you'll likely have to pay full listing commissions on the resale. 

In the past I've worked as a property manager and separately as a lease up agent.  50% of the first month's rent for a full lease up is very reasonable (at least in the US).  Normally you're looking at upwards of 100% for just lease up and about 75% if it comes with the residual of a property management fee.  

No one's going to work as hard as the owner, but how hard does she want to work?  I'm experienced in managing rentals, but I'm about ready to have someone else do it since the bulk of my rentals are 45 minutes away and inevitably every problem seems to come while I'm on vacation.  

An additional, often undiscussed benefit of a property manager is the emotional distance between the owner and tenant.  A property manger is unlikely to give a crap if the tenant has a problem and tries to appeal to emotions.  I've made some costly mistakes trusting tenants in their tough times.  

I'm currently with Soleil Real Estate in Seattle (I'll PM you information) and highly satisfied. 

No (or at least it has never happened with my HUD purchases). Rather, I'm saying HUD is unlikely to check the owner's occupancy status. I do not recommend investors bid under the pretense of owner occupancy.

I think @Jerred Morris is spot on with his suggestion for a local directory.  Other valuable things to a seller include information on average days on market by area (you could put your time to close next to it) and recommended professionals (such as lawyers, escrow companies, etc.).  The more specific your resources are the better, since people will often research with more specific phrases when the first search was too cluttered with crap.  When your content becomes valuable enough you may be able to position yourself as an expert to local media outlets, which could ultimately lead to super backlinks.  

@Lee S. I was one of the people pushing for a backlinks over keywords, but I do not think you should buy multiple domains and point to one unless you plan to market each of those domains as individual brands.  In fact, I would avoid anything that feels black hat, not because it is unethical, but rather because Google will eventually get you.*  The best SEO is providing true value like Webopedia did, causing me to backlink them in the last sentence.

As far as ideal domain names, I personally think phrase domains make a brand appear unprofessional compared to names such as lastnamehomes.com or abcinvestments.com.  Opendoor.com is arguably one of the most successful investment web sites for generating seller interest to sell, and the name doesn't make me think of anything in particular.  Zillow is the most popular web destination for sellers, and it's a made up name.  

*Google is very serious about creating artificial intelligence.  A prudent SEO strategy would assume they will eventually know "everything" you're doing.   

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