All Forum Posts by: Harrison Liu

@Abdul Azeez

I understand your frustration. My proposal is to learn from this and don't give up on RE. when I first invested in re, I had a mentor that was all I had, didn't read any books and nothing like BP was available. I went straight to multi-family and it turned out to be a blessing. I also made tons of errors because of lack of understanding of re or put it in another way lack of education in RE. but one thing I did right is I never give up. so don't be discouraged by the first investment and please don't blame it on BP. You will never learn from your own mistake if you blame on others. 

On the rental. I'd give two more weeks after the new concessions, if it is still not rented. you need to be more aggressive like drop $100 every two weeks till it's rented. I understand you have an internal threshold but that has nothing to do with market rate. so you need to leave youreally emotion out of it and let the market works it out.

don't mean to rain on your parade. but Joe and Diane bring up good points. the price trending down is a big red flag. especially compared to 2001 price. you think it's a solid investment from cash flow point of view. the guy who onwed it before you might thought the same till he sold it to you. you need to think about your exit strategy. what you don't want to see is the next guy who buys from you thinks it's even a better deal than you paid for.

sorry I have seen, not me posting it.

search DFW real estate investment on face book. I have multi-family deals posted.

search DFW

I remember when I bought my first rental properties the seller was an immigrant from Brazil. this was 2001 and he started investing in the 70s. He was building a cabin in the mountains and was liquidating his entire portfolio. I remember he told me real Estate is better than gold and you just hang on to it you will be doing very well. he was doing quite well at that time, he had tripled the price when he sold it to me. I asked him why he didn't give it to his kids. He said he tried but his kids wanted nothing to do with it. These were the second generation of immigrants. All they wanted were instant gratifications that doesn't involve any work. we the investors today will face the same challenge of teaching our kids about investing and they only have one parent not the rich dad and poor dad . So they can not compare and learn from it.

I agree with you whole heartedly. I have a 9 to 5 job all my life up till last year. Thanks to real estate I am able to stand on both of my feet without the support of corporate America. it is amazing to see the fruits of labor for all these years. real estate is the career that I will never be retired from. but it does beat 9 to 5 for any given day by a long shot. 

I get it BPers love making money in real estate. but besides making money, how much do you like the business? I have been investing since 2001 and went through the roller coaster of 2008 crash,  made money, lost money and came out OK. over the years, I had two evictions sued by tenant once and tenant lost in small claims court. I love the mailbox money. but I hate it when tenant having problems. hate it when tenant gives notice and have to go through renting the unit. after being through the last crash, I have to make sure I am prepared for the next down turn which means watch the cash flow, the reserve closely and pay more attention to the macro economic climate. 

I don't regret the journey I took 16 years ago and I will do it again if asked. but the end goal of all this is achieve financial freedom, not for the love of real estate. I have seen people claim to be passionate about real estate. I guess I will never be that kind of person. 

Hi Anthony, a good way to start is to join a local meetup. I think there is a one in South in the Tacoma area. Good luck!

I have a couple triplex in Queen Anne. Each unit has its own entry and has a kitchen even if it is a studio. A 1bm1bh without a kitchen and separate entry would be considered a unit by the city? I am not sure.