All Forum Posts by: Max Householder

Most cities or counties these days have an online mapping service where you can get information about a particular parcel. Try http://atlasplus.dcgis.dc.gov/ or if you know the address try http://geospatial.dcgis.dc.gov/realproperty/ for DC.

I usually Google [county name] + one of "property search" "gis map" "real property" etc. until you get a hit. Different counties call it different things depending on where you are in the country. Unless you're in a far-flung rural county, there should be something available online that will at least get you a Property ID # that you can take to the county clerk and ask them to look up for you. Most places you can get an owner name and address.

Try to stick to the city/county website. There are a lot of "Property Search" websites that charge for information that can be obtained for free from the county office.

Figure out the ARV, multiply by 70%, then subtract the cost of repairs to get your maximum purchase price.

Example: $100,000 ARV * 70% = $70,000 - $10,000 in repairs means you'll need to purchase this property at $60,000 or lower in order to BRRRR. So buy at $60,000, put $10,000 into it, you're all into a house worth $100,000 for $70,000 out of pocket. Then you refinance at 70% loan-to-value to get your $70,000 back and move onto the next deal.

If you do even better and get into the same property for say $50,000, you can pull out up to the 70-80% LTV to do a bigger deal next time or you can just get your $50,000 back and have a smaller mortgage payment and thus a higher monthly cash flow as a rental. As long as you're all in under that 70-80% number the bank will loan to you, there are a lot of options.

Have you tried another bank? I don't understand why your banker cares how much money you have into the property when determining whether to loan on it or not? The appraisal coming back $55,000 is obviously a bigger problem, but if it had appraised at your $72,000 number, I don't see why they would come back and say yeah well since you bought such a good deal and only have $65,000 into it, we're only loaning based on that lower number.

@Alissa Jenkins I'm currently working with @Peter MacKercher to find my first MFR deal, but I believe he's out of town this weekend. It would still be well worth your time to reach out to him though. He is an investor and property manager in south city and knows the area inside and out. I have also seen @Maggie L. post on the forums quite a bit about working in St. Louis as an investor-friendly agent.

Like @Kathy Henley said, south city St. Louis is great for small MFR, but it's all about cash flow and not appreciation. A few areas like Shaw and Tower Grove are becoming more trendy areas to live, but it's still VERY block-to-block as far as stable vs. unstable.

A lot of people who post on the forums do well with SFR rentals in Florissant or other parts of north and west St. Louis County (outside the city itself). Unfortunately there is not much MFR there unless you're looking for very large commercial properties.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

Set up alerts on Realtor or Zillow and run the numbers through the BP calculator or your own spreadsheet on every property that comes up in the market you're interested in. Then 'Favorite' or 'Like' them and watch to see which ones sell fast and which ones sit on the market for a long time. Do this for a few months while you read and listen to podcasts and you'll learn a lot about your market. Are the prices going up overall? Which properties seem overpriced yet sell quickly vs. which appear overpriced and don't sell. Why do the numbers appear to work great on this one, but it's been on the market for 3 months? Is there a glut of inventory or does nobody want it for some reason? Why did that one go Pending in 24 hours?

Try to create your own hypotheses and then bounce your ideas off investors in your area. You'll learn a lot and it's easier for someone to answer a question like, "I'm interested in flipping a house, what are some reasons that houses priced around $---,--- in zip code 00000 are selling in less than a week while similar houses priced about the same in adjacent zip code 00001 are sitting on the market for months at a time?" rather than asking Hey, I'm new! Tell me about my market!

When it comes down to it, people are animals and our animal DNA pushes us to survive through the least amount of effort possible. A wild cat has the ability to eat, drink, and defend itself for its entire lifetime, but bring it indoors and feed it for a few weeks and it won't leave because well heck, life is a heck of a lot easier in here with this person doing everything for me. People today can eat without ever cooking, let alone hunting or farming, sleep without ever building a house, and chores like washing and cleaning involve pretty much setting timers and pushing buttons or hiring someone to do it for you. If you can't get a job to afford any of those things, no bother, we've got programs that will steal from productive people to buy them for you.

This is was makes entrepreneurs unique. They're like the wild cats who might be raised in the domesticated life, but never fit in and eventually and turn away because while it might be more work, the life outside brings with it so much more freedom. Most people are just house cats who are born, schooled, and trained to be behave well while domesticated and then go on with a fairly structured and comfortable life that lacks any real freedom. Like the house cat, they might tire of the lack of freedom from time to time and make a break for the door when they see the shiny light outside, but they will be howling out on the back steps a few hours later once they get hungry or it starts to rain.

My point is, don't be surprised that most people don't want to do the work it takes to live a life of freedom. This is not to say that making the choice to live a structured life as an employee is wrong or less fulfilling in any way. Heck, it's the life I live right now. That being said, those of you trying to teach others about the other way to do it, don't be shocked when you lead horse after horse to water and they refuse to drink. It's not just millennials or "kids these days". There are centuries of human social evolution and programming that's gone into making the majority of people behave the way that they do. One book or one podcast isn't going to undo all of that. Frustrating as it may be, just try to lead by example, produce good content, answer questions when asked, and let people make the decisions they want to. They might not be better off for ignoring your good advice, but at least you'll feel sane at the end of the day!

Bureaucrats think that if they write things on paper and give it their blessing then it will magically fix real-world problems, but vaguely enforceable laws like this won't cure bad landlords. The good landlords will pay up and maintain compliance because the risk of being found out of compliance after a fire or during a lawsuit is far greater to them than trying to save the additional costs. This is how extortion works. Note that the mafia doesn't bother trying to extort other criminals, they focus on offering "protection" to the law-abiding small business owner. Government operates the same way.

The maliciously bad landlords (criminals, for all intents and purposes) will ignore the law, figure out how to fudge the paperwork, or avoid detection so it won't do anything to prevent a fire or accident or injury in their properties because the city doesn't have the manpower to go out and enforce it without a complaint.

But hey, in the meantime it'll make nanny state bureaucrats feel like they're doing good deeds and fill the city's coffers off the backs of the good landlords at little or no cost to the city, so of course they'll figure out how to push this thing through.

It's such a joke that these cities come up with this BS and then wonder why people don't want to do business in their jurisdiction. These laws extort the good landlords and push the marginal operators into the red so they get eaten up by bigger fish which lowers competition and raises prices for renters. In 5 years they'll be going, How the hell did rents get so out of control in our city?! We need to DO SOMETHING about this! Sigh.... smh

I am thinking I will start by targeting Arnold/Imperial and work out from there if necessary, probably west toward Murphy/High Ridge/House Springs before moving south. I am open to looking at deals anywhere, but I think it'd be tough for me to get into anything south of Hillsboro/Festus. I live in the city, so the northern JeffCo is def. closer to home.

I am looking to connect with a few property managers and/or management companies who operate in Jefferson County, Missouri (the next county south of St. Louis). I plan to initially focus my search for an investment property in that area and would like to get a firm grasp on the management side of things before I dive in looking at properties.

I have done a fair bit of Google-fu and can't seem to come up with any hits down that way. The property management companies in the city seem to have a focused portfolio within certain areas of the city and maybe a little in St. Louis County or the Metro East, but I came up with zilch for Jefferson County.

Northern JeffCo is pretty typical suburbia, but it then turns semi-rural very quickly as you get away from the 270 belt and seems to be quite different from St. Louis City & County in terms of tenants, landlord laws, etc. (which I like) so I would like someone with local experience rather than be the farthest flung property for a city-focused PM (if they'd even do it) and potentially become neglected or incur higher costs because of distance and/or unfamiliarity.

A little help? Thanks!