All Forum Posts by: Ian Fisher

My business so far is all in the US, I'm a US citizen and the only difference is I happen to personally live in Hong Kong. Appreciate if you could send over some further info on your products.

Thanks Keith, I am in Hong Kong but purchase property in the US. That said I could be interested in the HK info as well.

interested as well, thanks

Greetings Suraj and welcome from a fellow Hong Konger!

Hi @David F. and thanks for your thoughts. We don't have to use them for repairs / turnover, so what you suggest is indeed an option but just haven't gotten that hands on as yet...I guess my view has been that the reason we pay a PM fee is to avoid needing to be so hands on, and from 13 time zones away it would definitely be a challenge to run it that way. That said, maybe I should just get more clear with them that we have a certain expectation across the portfolio for net return and it's their job to make this happen (barring truly unforeseen circumstances) - take something like the 50% rule and make that their KPI. Then I could care less about all the ups and downs, just let them know that they need to hit their numbers in aggregate or else we will seek out someone else. This is where some amount of scale can potentially help us...thoughts?

Thanks @Sam B. . The biggest downside I can see at the moment to that plan is that (I believe) it would mean I can't put financing in place - I can't imagine a lender will be ok to lend on a property with a purchase option in place, since by definition it limits the likely tenure of the loan?

I guess when it comes down to it, a purchase option starts to look like a flip, just with a longer timeline and lower probability of closing?

Thanks everyone!

@Sam B. this sounds fantastic and I wish there was someone in the KC area who thought about it this way, but on the other hand if I were a PM company, I really am not sure I'd be so interested in managing purely for the monthly % and lease-up fees if I could also start getting into maintenance as an additional profit center...

Has anyone ever struck a deal with a PM to take their "earnings" in equity in the property rather than in cash? For example, I will give you, PM, x% ownership of the house (ramping up over a certain period of time), and in exchange for that you will manage and pass on maintenance at direct cost?

Thanks @Jay Hinrichs, that's very useful indeed. Really it helps validate my position going forward which is to only look at a) for buy-and-hold, true partnership JVs where the on ground partner has skin in the game, b) notes (and I buy your point on lack of leverage being a problem...but I'm reading up on hypothecation...yes I'm foreign-based but still US citizen so I don't believe any unique tax issues for me), c) fix-and-flip partnerships. My "financeability" is still an important asset that I'd like to find a way to use in this mix, so I think that says I need to do a reasonable amount of my "option a" above.

Having said that, I've currently got a nice portfolio of SFRs in Kansas City that I'd prefer to hold if I can make them work. Any advice on best way to maximize that investment, now that I've already got them?

Hi all, just bumping this post up - very curious to hear from others who may have had experience with this. The problem I have is that I will remain very geographically remote from the properties and the property manager obviously has huge impact on how successful the investment will be for me - the difference it makes to have an extra few hundred per year in maintenance on each property or not is huge especially when I leverage and am only netting $100/month/property in cash flow! Truly I'm not aware of any other investment where I should effectively give my checkbook to the investment manager who will effectively write themselves checks at will out of my profit. The killer in this is that the PM's own interests are directly opposed to mine since higher maintenance = more profit for him, less for me...

So aside from moving to the location of my properties and taking on the PM myself (no intention of doing this), I'm at a loss for what to do. Would there be any sense in trying to sell a percentage of the equity in each property to someone local in exchange for managing it? Seems much more complicated than it's worth, tells me that I should either refuse to do any deals in future other than JVs or move to less management-intensive assets like notes or syndicates.

How have other truly remote investors handled this?

Hi Martin, welcome and good to see you here. I'm based in Hong Kong and so not far away, would be curious to learn more about your Thailand investment.