All Forum Posts by: Jeff Greenberg

Tyson, This deal is in Houston. We are working on a couple of others in San Antonio.

If 300k is all of your available funds, no way would I recommend you put it all on a down on a property. You wouldn't be able to as there are inspection, appraisal, loan and other fees. Lenders may require capex reserves and you will need ultility deposits, funding operating account, insurance, etc. Another option is to diversify over several of the options mentioned by David. No need to put all the eggs in one basket. I have a friend that was chasing the deals as an active investor until her husband struck it rich in the import business. Now she is one of my passive investors and spends her time finding and evaluating other deals to invest in. Not a bad way to go.

I do believe that if you stay in your state with your investors and the investments are also in that state, you are clear of the sec. You will however have to abide by the state securities. The problem is this. You can do a dozen of deals and eveything go great, but all it takes is one to go sour and someone call foul.

Wow, I am disappointed that you had a poor experience. I have only been to Matt's twice and was not disappointed. I hope that you will tryout some of the other ones around. I am sure that the founders Jeremy and Ellis would be interested in your comments.

Excellent list David

The leverage vs debt free debate brings out a lot of emotion. On the financial side there is no question in my mind that leverage will increase your wealth faster. On the emotional side, I will sleep better knowing I don't have a mortgage to worry about. There is mid ground here. You don't have to be highly leveraged to gain from it. If you can get a fully amortized loan then you can ride out the bad times and eventually pay off the mort.

Welcome Stephen, You have come to a great place to learn.

Let me start by welcoming a fellow Californian to a great site for education. I want to jump to your point about busy schedules with family and careers. Real Estate investing can be very lucrative over the long haul, but it takes time. If you are tight on time then looking into actively investing may not be the best avenue for you. There are other ways to invest in CRE while taking on a more passive role. From your description, that you would like to fund the kids college fund, I am not sure why cash flow is a high priority. But let’s take cash flow. There are many hard money lenders that can offer you the returns you are looking for. There are other ways that you can be a private lender with other people handling your funds Buying notes is another avenue you could pursue, but again I would recommend being more of a passive investor and let your money grow. Neither of these other methods builds equity, so the third area, would be to work with someone that has more time to do the work and run the deal. Before we make a MF purchase we may look at over 100 non deals. We spend 100s of hours checking out numbers, properties and markets before we acquire a property. There are many companies like ours that use a private placement to raise funds and there are REITs that are sold on the exchanges. I certainly don’t want to discourage you from investing, but you have young children and careers and you will be torn. I know I could not have done what I am doing now while my children were young. My last point is this. When we are looking for distressed or value add properties, my ears always perk up when I find that property was owned by Californian doctor or professional that bought the property, but was more of an absentee owner. We can usually get these at a deep discounts. If you don’t have the time, become a passive investor. Do your due diligence on the person or company that will be doing the hands on work and you enjoy the benefits. Be careful about telling people how much money you have to invest. Get to know them first and do your due diligence.

@Jeff S. Good job nailing the LA club scene. Jeff you are welcome to come to either of my clubs and you will see that we are in alignment with the FIBI philosophy of no sales pitches.

http://www.meetup.com/VCREIC/

http://www.meetup.com/Commercial-Real-Estate-Mastermind-Network/

There are some good clubs available that won't pitch the speakers wares. Anything Ellis or FIBI puts on should be of great value.

@Gopal K. there are some good brokers in Houston that understand MF.Dean Chan who is on this site is a good broker to start with. We will be closing on a 60 unit with him next month.