All Forum Posts by: Isaac Braun

@Lloyd Schroeder I have a property in St. Cloud.and I live in the cities.  The class is a pain and is a direct effect of many many terrible landlords in St. Cloud.  I agree the 45 mile radius is ridiculous.  The easiest and cheapest solution is probably to have a PO box there and us that address for the application and select that you'd like all correspondence to go through the property owner rather than the property manager.   

@Tanner K. Welcome to BP, I am an investor in St. Cloud, MN.  I will DM you my phone number.  There are no groups in St. Cloud that I am aware of but I've been getting to know some of the other people on BP that also invest in St. Cloud., 

@Lee Fahy, @Erik Anderson, @Javier Sanmiguel, @Joel Bouma, @Jeff Marciniak, @Ryan Tuleja to name a few.  

For your lending needs, it would be highly worthwhile to sit down with @Tim Swierczek and talk investing strategy.  

@Frank Patalano  When I was looking for my first property, what was holding me back was lack of confidence in my numbers and abilities.  This still holds me back today.  I hustled to find deals, I would have accepted offers for 70-80% of market value.  But I would back out of the deal thinking "how could a new guy be getting accepted offers on these deals, what did I miss?"  This happened at least 3 times.  I finally pulled the trigger early in 2018 and just bought one.  It's been an experience.  Had some trouble with the city with the rental license, even though it had had a license for years.  My first tenant got a nasty divorce and left just 6 months into the lease (everything looked good on paper).  Had to find a replacement tenant right at the beginning of winter.  Ended up finding a great tenant but slightly below market rent.  Still cashflows but doesn't leave a super healthy margin after expenses, vacancy and capex accounts are filled.  At the end of the day, the process of doing your numbers properly, taught on biggerpockets is what saved me.  I underwrote for vacancy, repairs, capex etc.  So, yes I have below market rent, which stinks for now.  But the property still cashflows, not much cashflow but it sure beats being underwater each month.   

Nice work @Jordan Moorhead and @Tim Schulz!

Personally I am a fan of a turnkey model, and bigger pockets is mostly centered around the Kool-Aid that is Burrr investing.  I think turn key is for someone that works a full time job not related to real estate in any way.  Are your returns going to be lower, probably.  Do you need to vet and probably make several visits to see the work they do before purchase, yes.  Do you need to do your own due diligence and calculate your own number and not rely on the proforma, yes. Do you need to interview the property manager the same as you would if you were doing the burrr yourself, yes.   Do you need to research the market and perform your own evaluations of the population growth , absolutely.  Turn key gets a bad rap from criminals like Clayton Morris that sell Californian's 40,000 dollar houses that don't even exist.  There ARE good reputable turn key providers in the world.  Do your research.  You cannot recycle your cash as quickly as you can with Burrr investing, but frankly not everyone has the time to do that.  Real estate is supposed to get you to a place of freedom where you can dictate how you want to live your life rather than being a slave to a paycheck.   I really don't see how someone buying turn key properties until they reach a point of independence, and THEN take on more ambitious project that provide a greater return is a bad thing....

Have you considered trying to find a W-2 or 1099 job in real estate?  Maybe an agent or working as a building engineer for a large multifamily group. 

@Jordan MoorheadI'll try to make it to this but Im not sure yet with my work schedule

@Jonathan Treichler, I would first set up a meeting with @Tim Swierczek to get your financing ready to go and then set up a meeting with @Jordan Moorhead who will find you a property.  Can't go wrong with these guys

@Zach Goodwin, @Jordan Moorhead and @Tim Swierczek are the guys you're going to want to meet to get to know this market and get the financing needed to bring down a deal quickly.

welcome @Jake Simmens!