All Forum Posts by: Julian Merchant

Great points there David!

Totally agree with you that potential cash flow is key.

That brings up a great point of risk in investing far away vs. reward in capitalizing on great markets. Certainly a good topic for debate. Good luck figuring it out!

I'm in a similar situation to you up in NorCal. I love CA but agree with you that it's prohibitively expensive to buy here. Cap rates are terrible compared to the places that you mentioned. The best value for rentals seems to be in the south - across the board. 

I know, personally, if I were investing in that part of the country, I would want to relocate there for a month or so for several reasons. You don't truly know the landscape of a place until you live there for a month. I know a flipper who does a lot of work in Ohio and he has a little place there where he spends a few months out of the year. Not a bad plan.

Also, you would have time to establish connections in a place that are invaluable. You can hit up the local meetups and RE groups to find a good property mgmt company. At the very least, you have boots on the ground to check out a property if you get into a pinch.

That being said, not everybody can or wants to pick up and move to Florida.

I can't remember where I heard this, but someone suggested that you should invest w/in 2 hours of where you live, including flights and time that it takes to travel to the airport. I think that's pretty sound advice, unless you hire a really great property management company that you've thoroughly vetted. You might want to check out the Inland Empire or Phoenix.

Hope that helps.

Thanks @Dominic Jones for the feedback. And thanks to everybody else. I thought this might have gotten hung up with the zoning. 

I guess there's truly no good way of getting around 4plex prices.

I'm actually looking at some properties in Upstate NY, OH, and other cities across the Midwest. CA prices are a little too intense for me. 

And I'm looking at neighborhoods where this is pretty common. In college I lived in a place like this that was a mansion converted into 7 units and always wondered what went into it.

I'm mainly looking for answers from a financial and logistical standpoint.

Wondering any folks out there have experience flipping a large single family and converting it into a rental fourplex.

Is it costly? Did you change the floor plan considerably? What did you do about utilities? Did it affect your financing if you changed it to more than 4 units?

I'd appreciate any stories or words of wisdom you have.

@Josh Bakhshi totally agree with you. I'm really trying to avoid that useless agent tag as I get going with my RE career. Good tips.

@Ali Boone Venice is awesome...what a place! Thanks for the tips. And it's reassuring to see that someone is successfully doing the agent/investing hybrid nearby! I'm sure our paths will cross one of these days :)

Thanks David, Joe & Dmitriy!

Hey BP community! This is long overdue, but I thought I'd take a more active role in these discussions.

A little about myself...I'm a relatively new agent in Long Beach/north Orange County. I'm also looking to start investing as soon as I get the money/courage together. I studied urban planning in college and I'm looking at eventually rebuilding communities through REI.

As anyone familiar with Southern California knows, we spend about half our lives stuck in traffic. So, I've been going through all the podcasts and have been learning so much. Thank you Josh & Brandon...you guys rule.

Here's something I'm curious about. From the investor's standpoint, what can agents do to facilitate deals? I'm looking at working with investors, so if anybody has any feedback, it would be greatly appreciated.

Nice to meet everybody.