All Forum Posts by: Leandro Rodriguez

Love CT by the way...miss it. I immigrated to the US through CT and got married in CT.

@Annie Gillespie - you should not judge this deal based on the willingness of the seller to give you info. I agree with @Mike Roy that you should do your own due diligence on any assumptions you have made. If you have it under contract now, you might have a couple of days to fully dedicate to vet the deal. I am biased towards ACTION but you should do as much checking on your own as possible.

I see the numbers you are sharing - are all those things vetted by you critically? Is the 8% vacancy real? Is the maintenance cost real? This is an investment and it does get emotional, but you should pay attention to the numbers also, and be critical.

A glass of wine helps me take the edge off and take some distance from the deal. Also, 24 hours AFTER you make the decision before you pull the trigger helps me also.

1. Andrew, welcome. Get going...there is a lot of material out there but nothing trumps experience. BP is absolutely great and best for networking...but your best bet is ACTION. Tell us about your next move!!

crimenapping is dependant on the dat shared publicly.

The other is state data.

Thanks for the vote!

The title of your question and the content seem to be two different issues.

To validate what the market is paying for a particular type of unit I use:www.rentometer.com or I speak with my realtor to get some comps. These methods have proven quite accurate.

Then you need to run your own numbers and see if the property will hold at the "market" rent.

My experience: The market is usually quite accurate and unless you are dealing with luxury property, rents are pretty uniform in specific areas. In other words, you will get what the market dictates with some little room for variation, but not much.

I would definitely use some geographic analysis tool - which comes handy when looking at these things. it has made my life much easier. Here are a few sources:

http://www.crimemapping.com/

http://www.goccp.maryland.gov/msac/crime-statistic...

On the right hand bar of this page you have excel stats. http://www.goccp.maryland.gov/msac/crime-analysis-... I would use those and leverage some free gography tool such as www.arcgisonline.com. get a free 60 day account and drop the stats there to play a bit.

If you know a realtor, try to get a referral for an RE attorney who knows the area. They typically work with good brokers. I got mine that way. Good company, good rates, good service.

If you don't, do not ditch the REI idea if you feel you can do it. You can do a lot with your cash, a LOT.

@Kenneth Muench - unless you have a compelling reason to buy for either appreciation or a future cashflow jump, I personally find it REALLY hard to buy into negative cashflow. i don't know your particular situation but if you have the sort of money you mention, there are probably other possibilities outside of CA you might be interested in exploring, including paying off your home.

What drove you to this triplex in the first place, just out of curiosity?

Seems like you have pieces of your plan (timeline, type of housing, location). You should run a financial analysis to figure out if your funds will support the timeline or if you need to relax/tighten some parameters.

When you do your financial analysis, look carefully at all your assumptions (rent price, vacancy, contingencies) and do some sensitivity analysis (ie. double the vacancy rate, or reduce rent 25%) to see how your model adjusts.

People tend to be overly optimistic with plans and assumptions.