All Forum Posts by: Jiri B.

Great info @Chris Martin! I personally don't see B&B as a good real estate / passive income investment. More of a homeowner making extra $$ on one or two extra rooms they might have. Its seems more of an active investment and not very easy scalable. If you can get 8beds property, let your tenant live there for free in exchange for renting the rest of the rooms and managing all that, i could see this being able to scale better and possible a business model. But with BNB and most states / cities cracking on that, I would not assume this might work in 10 years from now.

Yeah I go the email as well. Here is more info: https://help.zillowrentalmanager.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040589753/

The only other way to get your listing on Zillow that i know off is to have it listed on the MLS. That's what I do. That will sync it with Zillow and ton of other sites.

But to be honest, I'm not surprised at all that Zillow did this. It's very common for companies to introduce new product, have it all free until they get good market share, then start monetizing it. So yeah, it stinks.

Please take this with a little humor. I don't want to offend anyone, but... I see posts and get lots of request for "Building a team" typically from newer members. Sounds something like this, and I'm sure you have seen it, got it too:

---- Hey, I'm a new investor and want to build a team. Looking for investor friendly realtors, attorneys, tax attorneys, property managers, handymens, roofers, etc.

And once you ask back what their experience is, you find out:

---- I'm new, I have no funding yet, I have no experience etc but I need this great team to be successful.

Great! So please, before you post this and send this type of message / requests, think what you can offer back? Why would any of those experienced people would want to work with you / invest their time and effort into you? Giving back to community is important, but being realistic with requests is important too. You WILL end up building your dream team, but it will take time and more effort on your end. Start small, one step a the time and in few years, you will have your dream team build throughout the process. 

What is your take on this? Is this too harsh? Have you done this too? Did you build your team this way? Or if you got this type of message, did you follow up? Did you end up being part of that team?

How often do you write an offer for a home that you have not seen in person? Do you always just lowball hoping to find a seller that will take the bite? How often does that actually work and how low the offer was? Was the property sitting months on the market? I found this trend quite interesting but typically the outcome is that the real estate agent that writes those offers for you just stops working with you or you just get more realistic and end up writing more reasonable offers. It takes an hour or so to write an offer so I wonder, if you could just get the offer out by your self in few minutes, would that be something useful?

To be clear, I'm not saying lowball offers are bad, but when i see a property in hot market that was just listed and someone wants to submit offer 30% below asking price, while every single property in that location sells within 3 days over asking price, that just seems like waste of everyones time, but still, some investors (and usually new ones) want to still do that and get upset at Realtors if they don't want to work with them or write the offer for them.

Any investors here locally in Raleigh, Carry, Wake Forest, Knightdale, Durham etc that would be interested in being able to submit offers them self without even seeing the home? What would your strategy be if the offer gets accepted? Go and see the home and the get out if that is not what you wanted?

@Tom Regal HELOC is meant for your primary home only. If you have enough equity in your rental property, you best bet might be to just get your lender underwrite that property and use it for downpayment for the next property. When i do this, i usually just bundle both properties under the same loan and handle both transaction with the same closing (doing it all at the same time). But since its investment property, you will be typically able to get only about 70-80%LTV on it, so unless you can pull out at least 50k to pay for the next property, it might not be worth it.

@Jermaine Artis I also use CFCU, they are great as long as you only work with your primary home or have very simple investment structure (aka 1 another home). 

@Travis Silva lots of very good points from the other members so no need to repeat all that. You might not like or agree with all that, but that is just how RE investing works. 

From a local perspective, it will be hard no matter what to purchase another SFH that will cash flow in the current market, especially if you want to stay in Raleigh. Even with 20% down. I would recommend looking into options (what else you could purchase and where and how that would compare to your current situation). You always want to pick the better option so look for options and start comparing. That might help you see your situation better.

If you can get creative and make it work with your current home, then go for it. I know some people don't mind negative cashflow to offset their other high incomes but if you are planning on growing your rental portfolio then negative cashflow just does not scale no matter how you put it. 

Think about what your long term goal is and how the current situation helps you get there. Do you just want 1-2 homes and cash in 500k in 20 years, or do you want 30-50 homes and live of your 30k/mo passive income?

I think having investment property that you are loosing money on every month is not a good long term investment in most cases.. You also need to account for maintenance and repairs so it will likely cost you more than you think.

I would sell it but i would not use the proceeds for your new home. I would use it to purchase a more suitable investment property that will be easier to rent and hopefully will cash flow better. If you get 40k, that should allow you to purchase property in the 150k-200k range here in raleigh that will also be much easier to rent.

Hey @Avi Levine I'm an investor, broker and have property management company as well here in Raleigh NC. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have about investments etc..

@Bill Mayo start small and start early. There is really not that much to learn or know about real estate investing. Lot's of new investors believe they need to understand everything before they start. Things keep changing and they never feel like they know enough to start so they never end up starting.

The best way is to just get started. Start with a small investment and keep it growing and you will learn the most while already investing. 

I bet you already know enough and know what your options are to get started so go and make it happen!

I would guess based on such a low expenses they are not keeping it up and probably have ton of deffered maintenance. I have seen many properties where investors squeeze as much profit as possible without doing any maintenance then when it's at a breaking point they sell it to a new investor because it just looks so great on paper.

If you do end up putting an offer on such property I would make sure to do a very good due diligence and even talking to the current renters. You might get a very good inside in to the property condition and the current investor / manager.