All Forum Posts by: Jeff He

I'm looking for a sellers agent in the Cleveland/Euclid, OH area. Does anybody have someone they've worked with in the past that they would recommend? Also, how do you typically vet candidates for seller agents.

Did you all end up finding a collections agency?

Just me brainstorming here, but...

You could potentially build a rent collection platform on top of something like Stripe and owners can hire you to process their rents. You can take a cut as a "payments processing fee"

You can also operate as a marketplace for owner's or tenant's to find and hire contractors to fix things.

You can operate as an ad agency to market rentals and/or develop software to screen tenants and license it to the owner.

In a nutshell, maybe the way around the broker constraint is to sell services that makes it easier for the owner to be the "property manager."

When a flipper gets a loan from a hard money lender, does the lender put a lien on the property?

If a flipper pays back the loan via the sale of the property, how does the collateral/lien work if the property is being liquidated?

Sounds like you got yourself a really good property. :) Congrats!

You should take everyone who comments on this thread out for dinner and write that as an expense. jkjk 

Thanks for the responses! So it sounds like you can't use the pre-payment to build a bond ladder with 1/3/6 month Treasury bills in a margin account (And use the margin to buy $SPY). 

What are people's thoughts on rent guarantee insurance? Would an insurance policy with a 1% or less premium make sense in any scenario? 

Question for the landlords and property managers out there. If a tenant offered to pay all 12 months of rent upfront on a 12 month lease. 

1) Would you take it?

2) Would you offer a discount for this upfront payment? If so, how much (In terms of a percent)?

@Cliff Stafford, are you setting up a syndication? If you're setting up a Series LLC, it might be difficult to accomplish. But if they're separate LLCs you can set them up wherever and they can enter into business contracts between each other or hold equity in other LLCs.

*Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, and always consult professional advice. 

@Cliff Stafford, I used to set it up as a Delaware LLC and register it as foreign LLC. Eventually, I found it easier and marginally cheaper to just setup the LLC in the state that I'm buying in.

@Roberto Hernandez, you mentioned that you had a 9 year goal to retire. That means you're going to be better served by investing in cash flowing properties than properties that appreciate. The reason being that cash flow is more predictable and stable than speculating on appreciation. Yes, there is an argument to be made for appreciation and refinancing when you need capital, but then you're going to be at the mercy of market conditions (interest rates, how the economy is doing, etc). 

With that being said, the next step is more personal finance than real estate. You're going to need to know how much cash flow you need (expenses, saving for rainy day fund, saving for primary residence, saving for kid's college, taxes, etc). This annual cash flow requirement is the target cash flow income you would want your rental portfolio to have.

After that, I would just look at what places are renting in the areas you want to invest in and the cost to acquire/operate the properties (mortgage, insurance, maintenance estimate, etc) . 

Personally, all my properties are not in the DMV area. This is because it's been easier to find cash flow deals out of state. The price to rent ratio isn't as good as other states like Ohio or North Carolina.