All Forum Posts by: Jeffrey Long

By all means, represent yourself. The more people heed your advice, the more horror stories will occur and be disseminated.  This will, in turn, cause more people to come back and pay a premium to have a good agent work for them.  That's how Mr. Market works. Similar to why I love hearing landlord horror stories - you usually dive in and discover they were very sloppy and made their own bed and by spreading those horror stories they make room in the market for the rest of us to make money. You just can't call them sloppy or the public will string you up in social media kangaroo court.

 You still don't get the numbers involved. I had one if those low priced listings recently, 135k. Lowest house in our market. I received over a dozen calls for showing per day for 60 days. If I showed the house to every unqualified buyer, the return on my time per hour selling that house would have been about 3 bucks per hour. I'd rather go swing a hammer for 20X that. I have to weed through the buyers for both my seller and myself so we don't waste time on the tire kickers who can't bother to prove they are serious. 

@Rose Higgens is spot on with her responses and knows what she's talking about.  I'm a busy agent in Myrtle Beach with plenty of investments of my own.  I get 3+ emails/texts/calls a day from inexperienced investors who want a deal brought to them. That list is about 5000 people long at this point. What makes you special and why do you deserve the deal if it even becomes available? When you are an investor and first start working with an agent, you have something to prove because that agent has their phone ringing off the hook with tire kickers who claim to be investors who will never pay them anything. If the agent attempts to help all those people they will go bankrupt. I'll soon be changing my business to where I only work with investors on an upfront consulting fee basis to eliminate the tire kickers.

When you find an agent you want to work with as a beginner investor, you need to provide several things.

1. Proof of Funds or Pre-Approval

2. Your track record/investment history

3. Detailed criteria including numbers of what you're looking for

4. An example deal of what you're looking for

5. Lastly, for the first deal you should bring it to the agent, not the other way around.  After you've worked with me before and proved that you can pull the trigger, I'm happy to spend more time on you and not the 3 other people that want hour-long phone conversations today that will never go anywhere.

@Jordan Howard Ask your Realtor. I know I always have a list of recommended vendors for my clients in the area.

Hard to say without knowing exact location. Most people don't dream of staying in a mobile home when they go on vacation though, especially when there is a plethora of oceanfront condos to stay in.

As far as the tax rate, you default to the higher amount and must file with the county saying you live in the home as your primary residence to get the discount. Don't commit fraud. There are audits. Zillow and most other sources will assume you're buying for a primary residence purpose. Attorneys commonly do the same at closing and underestimate taxes.

Your property taxes seem to be a bit off. You're using our primary residence tax rate. Investment property tax rate is approximately three times that. Rent is a bit optimistic as well, probably by around $100 unless you're fairly close to the ocean.

Instead of asking me to disprove, perhaps first you should offer to prove? I'd be happy to see your analysis. I don't think OP said anything about golf or new construction, just talking about STR in general. If you know something the rest of us don't, feel free to share.

In short, they generally don't cash flow. You can make them cash flow if you have a good eye for BRRRRing and self-managing.

We're also on Facebook - Myrtle Beach Real Estate Investors group.

It's not abnormal to see someone own 2-5 individual condo units in Myrtle Beach, or more if they own an entire multifamily complex. For most, however, it is part of a more diversified portfolio across several markets.  A popular strategy is to own vacation condos in all markets that you personally vacation in.