All Forum Posts by: Ian Hogan

There are a lot of good meetups for real estate investors in the area that would be good to grow your network and learn from others that are and have been in your shoes as a new investor, message me and I can share on some specific monthly meetups.

Also sharing some multifamily data, this is Boston proper so it has an interesting trend compared to the rest of Massachusetts. Let me know if you have any questions on this or want to see other areas for data.

Welcome to REI!

There are a lot of good resources throughout this thread an additional one I would recommend looking at are the Fair Market Rents on the HUD website. Not an app just data, but this is a great website to know what the bottom for rent is for section 8 often times, this isn't true all the time so you have to be aware (it is more true in more populated cities). I often use this to help calculate some quick math on deals.

Something that a lot of folks are likely not aware of, especially the newer investors. I wasn't aware of this until my lender ended up showing me all of these different options from a lender's view. Likely I wouldn't have seen this if I haven't done multiple deals with this lender for myself and clients. Always trade offs, especially depending on how long that buyer is looking to keep the property, or refinance. Thanks for point this out for folks!

Massachusetts multi's has been interesting this year. Over the whole year we have had higher listings than the previous year (the last several years have had lower and lower inventory each year). The market supply has had a surplus meaning they are sitting longer and "stockpiling", nothing crazy but it is noticeable in the chart. Event with all that the sale prices have been over the list price on average close to 1.5% over, which would seem a bit counter.

If rates end up dropping a decent amount at all the prices could rocket even with inventory growing again. 

Consistency and follow up is key. Get back out there and keep it going!

Those are probably the biggest pieces, the rest is talking to other investors, surround yourself with these folks, build the relationships, run the numbers, get comfortable with the numbers, and start writing offers. 

I'm an investor and agent for investors while also having a regular job but I think the answer can often be the same for someone full time investing and "part time" investing. DMs and reaching out online is one thing but getting out there to meetups with other investors and boots on the ground at open houses, etc is a great way to get involved. A lot more trust is built in person vice someone behind the screen, and real estate investing is often a relationship and trust game. If you are full time investing or as an agent you theoretically have an edge to be able to do more of this relationship building while folks doing it "part time" would have less availability.

In Massachusetts if a lease expires it automatically turns into month to month, so I this may depend on state. So here it would just continue with section 8 unchanged. If you miss that 60 days it really just pushes when the rent can actually change. I've had it to where section 8 was delayed on that rent change even with the proper 60 day timeline and they back paid the rent to me based on the adjustment.

Usually with Section 8 you need to give them 60 days to approve a rent increase (this is at least how it is in Massachusetts with my tenants). During that time they determine whether or not the unit is "worth" the increase, from what I've seen as long as it comes to FMR of the area determined by HUD it should pass.

If you want to know if it will affect their portion of rent, this is usually based on 30% of their income and Section 8 covers the rest. You could not change the rent at all, and they could still pay more by a re-evaluation by section 8. It is based on their income and housing situation (dependents, etc). Your best bet if you want to know that is calling the Section 8 Housing Assistant assigned to your tenant and asking, they may be able to calculate what it would look like.

If you want to look for an investor focused brokerage or team in a brokerage I'd recommend looking for meetups in the local area for real estate investors or potentially other investor focused agents in the area, you can likely find both of these with bigger pockets (depending the location). That's what I did as an investor first, then ended up joining the real estate team that helped me buy my first multifamily.

Greater Boston inventory has risen over the last few months with plateaued sales since February. The buyer market remains consistent since the Market Supply metric tracks the Listing Inventory numbers. Sale Price vs List Price spike in April from a constant 0% difference. With the number of Sales in the Greater Boston area this change is likely caused by a swing in competition from buyers raising the average over asking sale price.