All Forum Posts by: Jake Wiley

I'd start reading, there are great books out there.    Once you've done some reading, you'll find a lot more success asking very specific questions.    

Joe Fairless's book is great.   

David Lindahl has a great book too.  

@Artem Pavlenko - Florida is a super hot market in general and Jacksonville is always noted as a growing city, so the short answer is yes it's a great area.   

With that said, Jacksonville happens to be the largest city by contiguous landmass in the US, so you are really talking about Northeast Florida!    The point being, you will definitely need to find your specific areas, because the rural areas are not going to be as hot as the urban areas for what you are looking to do.   

@Shai Peer

DFW/Dallas is a really large area and Realtors tend to specialize in their niche areas.   Thus you may find a lot of bias in the responses you get from individual realtors, doesn't mean they are wrong, just might be a lot more information to sort through.   

Here's my recommendation

1) Clearly define what you are looking to get out of your investment strategy/deals. The more specific the better. Price point for investment, cashflow, investment type LTR, STR, etc.

2) Go to the local REIA and start asking questions of investors, agents and wholesalers there about their areas and why they chose them to see what matches most closely with your objectives.

3) Do some research and see if you can find agents that are working in the areas that you defined in step 2 above and interview them as well.    

It will take a little legwork up front, but you should come out of it comfortably knowing where you want to be, especially in such a large area.    

Good luck.  

 

From an STR perspective, you really want to do a few things well. One, learn how to market your property so it stands out. Professional pictures, great descriptions that have people imagining themselves there enjoying everything the property has to offer. With that said, being very factual about the property, anything that is a drawback needs to be clearly disclosed upfront. There is nothing worse than an upset guest, if you can't make them happy and they leave a crappy review it's hard to overcome and could be the spiral of death for your property. When you highlight what is great and have people seeing the possibilities they might have missed, but also know going in that not everything is perfect it will be a win.

Congrats on the new investment.   STRs are very rewarding and also offer a cool spot to visit when vacant.   

In my podcast, this is the book that is cited the most as the book that launched investing careers.   There are a million investing books out there, but something about this one really gets through.      

It's a great book, glad it resonated with you too! 

I'd look at a couple of options and the reviews online for different companies.     The service levels tend to change and it is based on the availability and quality of subcontractors.      With that said, there is sometimes a benefit in that you may actually get someone out quicker due to the relationship with the warranty company.    

It's not an easy process and usually takes longer than a normal repair, however, the benefit is that your costs are somewhat controlled.   Your experience won't look like what you see in commercials.   

For higher ticket items like an HVAC system, unlike when a non-warranty tech comes out and wants to sell you a new system when it's a warranty call, they will find a way to bring it back to life no matter what.      

@Kyle Nigro - Any time!   Good luck.

You should know the name of any human occupying the property and they should be listed on the lease.   You don't need to drill into the facts and circumstances of the minor, but you should have a legal name on the lease.   This actually protects the tenants as well as you, as you are only allowing those named on the lease to occupy the premises.   If the minor is not named, you have the right to say he can't live there, which would put the adults in a bind, thus protecting them.    It also protects you in that you can ensure that some strange situation isn't happening where unknown people aren't moving in and out of the property.   If that is happening you can terminate the lease and get the people out of your property.   

Generally, the purpose of having the LLC is to get the benefits of the "Limited liability" protection. Meaning if you operate it correctly your risks are limited to your investment in the particular LLC. When you comingle funds, you are allowing potential plaintiff's to "Pierce the corporate veil" and there is no longer limited liability.   

The short answer is if you can take the proceeds and reinvest and increase your cash flow that maintains greater than a 1.25 DSCR, you should definitely think about it. Obviously finding a "great deal" is tougher now, so get your arms around the market, but you've got good equity to work with here.