All Forum Posts by: John Matthews

 Chris - all good suggestions, thanks. I've actually had the thought of becoming a licensed appraiser before. It's certainly not necessary but I think could be beneficial for me at this stage.

@Riker Blank - Welcome! It's funny to see that you're in Drexel hill, I'm actually going to check out some multiplexes (buy and hold) in the area the weekend after next!

@Teresa Ludlow I'm kind of all over the map. I'm looking in Norristown, Oak Lane and Drexel hill primarily, but not exclusively. We'll see what shakes out - first offer is going through tomorrow! 

What about yourself?

@Teresa Ludlow Welcome to BP. If you ever need anything from over the river, don't hesitate to ask.

@Brandon Tahincioglu - So to potentially solve your problem, but not answer your actual question: Have you considered partnering with someone that does live in the area? You might get a bit more upside, with all of the other turnkey benefits. The downside is depending on the partnership, you may have to front more capital in the partnership. Though that may not necessarily be a bad thing. 

Scenario: you partner with a rehabber, you bring the capital and shoulder the financial risk, they do the work. 1 year later, do a cash out refi, you get a good chunk of your capital back (say 80%, maybe more, depending on the structure), and now you've got your "turn key property" managed by someone else with skin in the game.

@Michael Clark Welcome! Always good to see other philadelphians on here. Which DIG meeting is this? I've gone to two so far in different areas (one in philly riverwards - at Johnny Utahs and the other at Fairmount Grille), they've both been really helpful for me if only because of the contacts that I made. I had goals, and a vague idea of how to proceed beforehand, but as @Joe Mulcahy said, meeting a few people and following up afterwards has launched me forward. I definitely agree, that the most important thing you'll get from the meetings is the connections.

Hope to see you at a meeting soon.

@Mike H. Let me know if you end up going with a VA and if it works out. The $3/hr was based on this article: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/07/24/using-a-virtual-assistant-in-your-real-estate-investing-business/ though, you're right, admittedly it does say for "some tasks.

@Simon W. Understood, I agree certain tasks are definitely best kept for those that are well qualified, especially considering the liability in messing up with the IRS, but as I understand it, some of the VAs are quite skilled, considering they do lots of real estate work.

For what it's worth, I did come across a piece of software that proports to actually interpret the receipt data for you...if I find the program again I'll post back.

Thanks @Mike H. 

What's stopping  you from getting a bookkeeper to handle the tax-prep? I'm not sure if anyone has any out of the box solutions, but if it were me, I'd get a cheap scanner designed specifically for that, have that automatically drop files into a dropbox folder that's shared with a $3/hr virtual assistant who inputs it all into quicken or the like once a month.

What about everyone else? What haven't you offloaded to someone else?

See this list: http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/93/topics/76751-finding-motivated-sellers-my-list

As the title says, what are your pain points? What are some things that you don't like to do but are required for your business? Potentially tasks that you could delegate to someone else but for one reason or anotheryou haven't yet.