All Forum Posts by: Jim K.

Quote from @Matthew Irish-Jones:

That is not what most people want to hear. 

I think it's getting worse, too. I understand how get-rich-quick types gravitate to real estate. But nowadays, it often seems that's all there is in the way of new blood in the field. Well, maybe that's not fair. These people are not looking to buy a Lambo next year. But for many of them, the mantra always goes: "Let me get rich (but we won't call it that) and let me quit my job (as soon as possible) so I can be happy."

When you tell these people that it often takes more than a decade before the investing makes things like that possible, they go looking elsewhere for advice, until they find someone who's willing to sell them what they want to hear.

Building relationships, improving your lifestyle, relieving chronic anxiety, creating strong friendships, building bonds with family, work-life balance, delayed gratification, risk-reward management, lifelong financial freedom, all the really good things about REI are often suffocated under the overwhelming need to GENERATE INCOME TO QUIT MY HATEFUL JOB.

What's the best thing about investing for me? My wife and I have not had anything close to an argument about money for the last twelve years. That always meant a lot more to us than quitting our jobs, even though we both eventually managed to.

Quote from @Steve Vaughan:

@James S. congrats on what looks like a great plan.  I would probably borrow a little more than $100-$150k if I could to keep more reserves.

All I can do is mention my favorite fellow long-term operator and handyman in P-burgh @Jim K.. Hopefully he has a minute to chime in.  

Best wishes on your worthy project👍

 Sorry, James and Steve, Hermitage is another one of those "own little world" kind of places in Mercer County, PA. I know less than nothing about new construction loans for duplexes, let alone how to operate up there, in what is essentially a Pennsylvania suburb of Youngstown, Ohio. Good luck to you, James, because it does sound interesting, and I hope to learn from you in the future.

Quote from @Jennifer Fernéz:

Quote from @Jim K.:

This is way too hypothetical with massively important variables missing.

1. The most important one, as @Tim Ryan points out, is the question of whether the investor is single or married. I am living proof that there's absolutely nothing more important than answering this first question first. My wife is fully involved in our business. She brought us our first deal. She handles many of our tenants these days.

We wouldn't have gotten off the ground if my wife was not right in this with me.

2. What's the stable blue collar job? Blue collar jobs is that they are usually linked into larger networks within communities. Here's a great example: C.S. has been my dumpster-rental guy for the last five years. He came to me by way of my mason, who also uses him.

C.S. is really damned good at what he does, and a big part of this is that he's a great communicator. Of course people talk to him, so he knows EVERYONE in the single-family renovation game in Pittsburgh. And he knows who's working regularly, who's only off-and-on, who's going through troubles, who needs extra work. C.S. is one of my first calls when I need somebody good at something specific. Ironically, C.S. isn't in the real estate game himself because his wife isn't up for the life.

3. How tight is your money game? Especially starting out, you're never going to get anywhere if you don't manage to get full and complete control if you don't have an absolute grasp on all your personal finances, if you don't know about lifestyle creep and the hedonic treadmill, if you or the person handling your money can't pinch a penny until the shield dents.

4. This business is never linear. Once you get to ten years in, your life is going to look very, very different than what it does today. I recently hit a buffet far away from our normal one down the street, and there were two guys in T-shirts and jeans in there talking at the top of their voices about how they were "$125K into this deal" and were working on "getting $50K out of this flip." That was me six years ago. Now I have other concerns.

Sure, I've been self-employed in the business now for two years and my wife just quit her main job, but we're not slowing down now. If you end up being the same way, your ten years may end up looking more like fifteen -- it might just be a better deal. Are you willing to accept that?

That's the real world of investing, instead of pie-in-the-sky strategizing at the buffet.

 1.  Single.   Finally.   Why does it matter in real estate?

2.   I’m a retired and disabled teacher.   I get my salary from SS now.

3.  I make plenty of money but want to make more.

4.  What are your concerns now?   What were they as each year went on?   Interested in hearing your mindset shift.

Best of luck to you.

This is way too hypothetical with massively important variables missing.

1. The most important one, as @Tim Ryan points out, is the question of whether the investor is single or married. I am living proof that there's absolutely nothing more important than answering this first question first. My wife is fully involved in our business. She brought us our first deal. She handles many of our tenants these days.

We wouldn't have gotten off the ground if my wife was not right in this with me.

2. What's the stable blue collar job? Blue collar jobs is that they are usually linked into larger networks within communities. Here's a great example: C.S. has been my dumpster-rental guy for the last five years. He came to me by way of my mason, who also uses him.

C.S. is really damned good at what he does, and a big part of this is that he's a great communicator. Of course people talk to him, so he knows EVERYONE in the single-family renovation game in Pittsburgh. And he knows who's working regularly, who's only off-and-on, who's going through troubles, who needs extra work. C.S. is one of my first calls when I need somebody good at something specific. Ironically, C.S. isn't in the real estate game himself because his wife isn't up for the life.

3. How tight is your money game? Especially starting out, you're never going to get anywhere if you don't manage to get full and complete control if you don't have an absolute grasp on all your personal finances, if you don't know about lifestyle creep and the hedonic treadmill, if you or the person handling your money can't pinch a penny until the shield dents.

4. This business is never linear. Once you get to ten years in, your life is going to look very, very different than what it does today. I recently hit a buffet far away from our normal one down the street, and there were two guys in T-shirts and jeans in there talking at the top of their voices about how they were "$125K into this deal" and were working on "getting $50K out of this flip." That was me six years ago. Now I have other concerns.

Sure, I've been self-employed in the business now for two years and my wife just quit her main job, but we're not slowing down now. If you end up being the same way, your ten years may end up looking more like fifteen -- it might just be a better deal. Are you willing to accept that?

That's the real world of investing, instead of pie-in-the-sky strategizing at the buffet.

@Steve K.

As a matter of fact, I recently discovered $2.2 million dollars, found it in stuffed into Ziploc bags under the attic floorboards of a tear-down I bought at the sheriff's sale. I wonder, should I invest it in Ohio? I really need help deciding.

I'm going to go with false ones here:

1. "Don't be a landlord, you're going to be unclogging toilets in the middle of the night." I have yet to unclog any toilet but my own in the middle of the night.

2. "You can't find good tenants in cheap properties." No, incompetent landlords just don't know what to look for, how to look, or even what they're looking at.

3. "Make sure your tenants have good credit scores." I could write a book on how misleading FICO scores can be down in C-class, and why.

4. "Don't buy old houses that are money pits, stick with stuff that's less than 40 years old." This is wildly untrue in Allegheny County, PA, where the absolute best-built single-families went up just before the Great Depression and the shoddiest tract builds in the county went up from 1970-1990. Once you properly square away a well-built Depression-era property in Pittsburgh, it stays squared away reliably much more than anything built during the Steel City Crapshack Era. You just have to know what needs to be done.

5. "My numbers are right and the home inspection looks good." Again, this is very much a lesson learned from C-class investing in old urban properties in the Rust Belt. Your numbers are simply not worth the paper they're printed on if you really need to rely on a home inspector to tell you about the property's build quality and condition. A home inspector should be a failsafe. You have to know something about housing if you're going to make money in housing.

6. "Work on your business, not in your business." First, know your business. You can work on ignorance only so long before it breaks you into little pieces.

7. "Get three estimates." When you are actually IN this business, you need to have trusted associates to work with. You need guys who are always THERE when you need them. You pay all your contractors WHATEVER THEY ASK FOR, and if they're not damned good at what they do and know exactly what they're worth, they're not worth working with. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO PLUMBING AND HVAC. You will never lose more money than you will skimping on these two trades in your portfolio. After enough time in this business, most especially in C-class, you will worry routinely that you're not throwing your plumber or your HVAC guy enough work.

8. "(Pick-a-minority) tenants are the worst." The absolute worst tenants I've had have all been white, native-born Americans. There really is a level of insane entitlement, a height on Mt. Bull***t, that only white people can reach while everyone else languishes at lower altitudes. I've seen an overwhelming amount of utterly freakish craziness up close and personal, and I can confidently bear witness that white people always end up being the freakiest freaks of all.

@Dan McGrew

No offense, but I think you're just too gullible for real estate. You should accept it and move on. I have been both formally diagnosed and medicated in the past for paranoia, and I feel I'M BARELY PARANOID ENOUGH for real estate.

@Raj Balakrishnan

Pretty much every county and every state has its own computerized public records system. It pays to start learning how to use these systems, so you can conduct your own eviction searches and local criminal checks before run national checks on people. What the national paid checks run by credit agencies are really good for is credit histories. Housing and criminal histories are not really their strong suits.

Quote from @Jonathan Greene:

It's because they are looking for get rich quick, not buy real estate and wait. Most of us know the drill, but they want to pay for hyperspeed, but also not do any of the work. I don't love the programs, but anyone who spends the money can succeed if the network and do all the course work, even the bad programs just have replicated material.

I think a really big part of why people go to the gurus for glorified spoonfeeding is "uncertainty avoidance." Since we're ten pages into this thread it may be safe to show a little book-learning and mention cross-cultural psychology and Geert Hofstede. Some people will simply do anything to avoid the feeling of uncertainty. Of all European cultures, the Greeks seem to have the most pronounced tendency for this, which is why I think I've spent so much of my life battling that feeling in myself.

I've messaged the OP.