All Forum Posts by: Ian Fisher

Hi BiggerPockets community

I wanted to send a quick note of thanks to the whole community: as a (very) remote investor, finding BiggerPockets has been a real eye opener for me.

Until I found this community a few months ago, my investment strategy was limited to working with one turnkey provider to whom I'd been introduced a number of years ago, and zero options for leverage. Nothing wrong with him at all - but since coming to BiggerPockets, I've:

- had my eyes opened to a much broader range of potential deal types and structures - including many who are ready to truly "partner" rather than my previous setup of simply being "sold to"

- been impressed and grateful for the extent to which so many of you have been willing to answer questions I've posted on here and asked privately

- gone through what I feel like is nearly an entire self-taught course on real estate investment (and no doubt with an absolute ton still to learn)

- made connections with a number of you that I am confident will lead to mutually profitable business (I'll protect the names of the innocent, you know who you are)

- found ample opportunities to leverage my funds - though clearly am always looking for more!

So, in a word, THANKS! I can only hope to repay the favor someday - look me up if any of you ever pass through Hong Kong.

This is exactly what I've been doing as well. I'd love to find more opportunities to increase volume, and as a remote investor am happy to compensate someone for the work in managing it - a variety of potential structures for this. I'd bring capital (though very interested in leveraging as much and as quickly as possible) and a second set of eyes, you'd bring local knowledge, potentially lender connections, and on ground presence to get the work done. Ongoing pm could be done by you or another party. Would be happy to hear from anyone interested in pursuing this.

Hi all

I'm sure I'm not the first person to deal with this issue and hoping for some advice from all the great experience on BP. I'm a SFR buy and hold investor who is very remote from my properties and so I retain a professional property manager. This manager is very competent but I have two issues:

- our contract is structured as a percentage of gross rent plus a leasing fee, which I understand is fairly typical. However, the PM also runs a maintenance company and uses this company to handle any maintenance needs that arise, which are then billed to me of course. Not sure that the rates aren't competitive, but the issue is that the PM will obviously be incentivised to keep these amounts (number of callouts and price per callout) as high as possible while I'd obviously prefer the reverse. It's made a significant negative difference to my returns, and conversely is where I believe the pm makes the majority of their revenues from me rather than from management fees. How do you deal with this? I've suggested a pm fee to be a percentage of net rent, but pm has no interest and I understand this isn't standard in any case

- along similar lines, when a tenant moves out and leaves property trashed (beyond what security deposit will cover), pm has little incentive to recover these funds and so I'm often left out of pocket again - with the repair costs in the pm's pocket

Thanks in advance!

Thanks and I'll do that.

I'm interested to learn more, thanks.

Yes I do. Can you email me on [email protected]?

Hi Mike, I'd be interested to learn more, can you send me an email on [email protected].

Hi Jerry, are you able to work with a US citizen living outside the US? I file US tax returns, have a SSN, credit score, etc. Look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks for the response!

This is not a hard money or private lender. Just to clarify - they are not insisting on an O&E report for the property I'm seeking financing on. What they're seeking is an O&E report for each of the several other properties I own free and clear. Apparently this is to provide comfort / proof that I don't secretly have mortgages in place on one or more of these other properties, which if it were true would mean I have a higher debt-to-income ratio and number of already financed properties than what's appearing on my application.

I own 5 other properties free and clear, so that adds up to a significant expense for this mortgage, and I would expect the same issue for future mortgages as my portfolio grows. Any suggestions on other ways I can get the lender the assurance he's looking for without incurring this expense?

Hi Roland

Good to hear from you on here and welcome to BiggerPockets!

I live in Hong Kong which is not so far from Guam. Do you think there are opportunities to invest in real estate in Guam at all?

Ian