All Forum Posts by: Derek Johnson

Congrats @Jesse Carlson!

It sounds like you are quite handy! We have never done something that extensive. Is your hard money lender local? It sounds like they were pretty flexible. We are looking to get into some flips and more buy and holds as well. We are mostly focused on buy and hold for the long term. Just lost a four way bid for a property here in waterloo that would have been a great flip or rental candidate. We went above asking price, with no closing costs but someone outbid us. I am working on building out a motivated sellers website to try to get off market deals. Let me know how the listing goes!

Trevor,

Welcome! I want to challenge you to think about what you want real estate to do for you instead of setting a goal as a number of units. I also started out that way and ended up getting impatient and buying properties to stay “on track.” I’ve since learned I don’t care how many units I have—in fact the less the better if they meet my goal. Currently my goal is $4,000/mo in passive income. So I could buy 25 units that cash flow $160/mo. But I’d actually prefer to own 10 units that cash flow $400/mo. Or if I did own a higher number of units—I’d want scale like a small-mid multifamily property for easier management and lower capital costs compared with 25 single family units.

Either way congrats for getting into REI at a young age—time is our scarcest asset and no matter what you do if you keep at it you will do well over the long haul!

Nick,

I’m also interested in this topic. I think it’s kind of a grey area, and to follow the letter of the law you would need your brokers license because you’re advertising property that you don’t own. That being said I know people in my area that have done a few deals without it—but that doesn’t mean they necessarily should be. Let me know if you decide to dive deeper and dig anything up. 

That’s awesome! Great job.

I'd definitely sell! Equity doesn't pay the bills, but putting that money to better use for cash flow definitely can!

@Eric Sender - I'm seeing your post because someone mentioned Iowa and I have keyword alerts set up. 

If you are interested in Iowa, I would be willing to partner on deals with you. We self manage our properties so you could be hands off, and we could teach you as we go. We're not that much farther along than you honestly, but we have four rentals under our belt and about four years experience actually managing them. Iowa is a pretty landlord friendly state with good opportunities for cash flow. 

We actually put an offer in on a property Sunday and are waiting to hear back. Let me know if you're interested at all. I'm not going to pretend I know how to make it all work, but we can figure things out I'm sure. I was already considering beginning to look for partners to do more deals. Either way, best of luck!

Shailesh,

I'm not an expert on the CF market, but typically I've seen the rentals there go for around $400/BR. What I think you are running into is that your house is too nice to be used as a rental property. In the upper end of the market it starts to make less and less sense to operate as a rental property because the cash flow  you can generate generally isn't enough to cover your expenses. A lot of the market in CF is student rentals, so it would basically be four students splitting the rent four ways, and the parents might be footing the bill. There's been an uptick in available rentals in the Cedar Valley which is putting pressure on rents in the higher end of the market as well. I'd recommend trying to sell if you could.

Welcome Chris!

I see you are in the quad cities area, I think that would be a great place to invest! Do you happen to work at John Deere? I work at the DTO site in Waterloo right now and actually just applied for the Finance Development Program last week. I should finish my BA in Accounting after the Summer 2018 semester. I actually got interested in accounting after I learned about real estate investing! 

My wife and I currently have four single family rental properties, and are also interested in multi-family. BP has been an awesome resource to learn from and you will be happy you joined! I try to listen to the podcasts when I drive for any distance (mostly on the way to school at UNI). It sounds like we have some similar goals and interests, I'll see you a colleague request! See you around the forums!

 Excellent tips! We have an auto-response E-Mail as well but will be editing to incorporate some of your ideas.

Does anyone require a valid Photo ID BEFORE showing the property? Or any other tips to verify an interested party is who they are claiming to be? Appreciate it!

Welcome @Trey Washington!

I work at John Deere DTO in machining, and am going to school for BA in Accounting at UNI. I own 5 houses, all single family (4 rentals). Rich Dad Poor Dad is where I started as well. After you finish it, I'd recommend The Millionaire Real Estate Incestor by Gary Keller. I've read it multiple times and it's really great. BP is great too, having the forums to post any questions that make that come up is an awesome tool. 

How long have you been at Deere?