All Forum Posts by: John Boychuk

I apologize for being so broad with my 700 cash flow example. Those are duplexes in my market with a purchase price between 50k-70k in C area neighborhoods.

I would recommend you start reading books on investing. The saying goes, "It is easy to make one million dollars, if you start with 10 million." 

Don't rush to purchase a property. Make sure you analyze it and it cashflows after budgeting out for repairs, capex, vacancy, utilities, tax, insurance, P&I. Depending on your market, cashflow may vary, but I don't buy anything that doesn't cashflow atleast $700/m.

The biggest headache you are going to have is tenants. Definitely go to your local landlord/REIA meetups, and find someone that is willing to mentor you. Tenants can make or break your business.

For our single family units, we have a single lease for as many people as we believe can safely occupy the unit. We don't care how much each individual on the lease pays each month, so long as we get the full balance in a timely manner each month.

We use AppFolio for our management, which is extremely intuitive in regards to tracking rent payments, thus we don't have any issues keeping track of who paid how much. If that is something you may find challenging, I definitely would second Lisa's suggestion to have one check for the unit, and ensure it is in the lease.

Totally off topic of real-estate, but you ever hear this anecdote:

A man's home has flooded and he is trapped on the roof. He prays to his god to be saved. 

First came a man in a row boat offering the man rescue. The man refused, saying that "God will save me."

Then a motorboat came offering the man rescue. The man refused, saying that "God will save me."

This continues and continues, the man drowns. When the man meets God, he asks "how come you did not save me?."

"I sent a row boat, a motor boat, a helicopter... What more do you want from me?" God replied.

On the topic of real estate, I would submit the offers, unless you feel that they are not going to make an offer that is reasonable enough to be accepted. In that case I would personally find a way to distance myself from them. There is a point where your costs will outgrow your income from the sale, and it is no longer worth taking up your time with it.

Rochester is a very interesting city, as going a few houses down can drastically change the quality of the neighborhood. I think that crime maps can give you a decent idea of what areas are like, but it can vary extremely quickly. 

If you are looking for more "high class" neighborhoods, you should be looking in area like Cornhill, Southwedge, east ave, Highland area. If you are looking for something in the b-c+ area, pearl/meigs depending on what part you are on will do that for you (however at that point you are just as well off investing in any other city in terms of cashflow to cost per unit). Then if you are willing to take C neighborhoods, anything else in Rochester will go.

I would highly recommend calling up a few property management companies in the area, they can give you a much more specific idea of what to stay away from. They can also give you an idea of the areas that are turning around with young professionals moving into the area. There has been a lot of construction going on and I predict that Rochester is going to make a come back. I would advise that anything near Ave a,b,c,d,e you stay FAR away from. 19th ward in the Thurston and NE part are pretty rough. Generally if the areas are high crime on a crime map, I would not touch it. 

I apologize in advance if that was a little all over the place, in summary: You can walk 5 houses down and go from a decent neighborhood to ghetto. Contact local property managers to get a better idea of specific areas to invest in. They should be able to tell you based on addresses whether or not you should even touch it. 

If you need some recommendations for local managers, let me know.

Define affordable? Around my area you can rent an office space for ~$400/month. There are 4-5 offices on each floor of the building so the cost that would normally be pretty high is shared among several people.

If that isn't an option, a PO box is going to be your best bet. Unfortunately you won't have a physical address, but you will be able to receive mail.

Any particular reason the address needs to be searchable online?

Could you please elaborate on this?

Highly recommend you read a few books on the basics before you jump in. BiggerPockets has a lot of great podcasts and quite a few go over the BRRRR strategy, which may be something you are interested in, especially if you are looking to put down less than 25%.

To add onto what Johann has said: There is so much more to flipping than just the rehab. Being able to do a lot of stuff yourself is great, but a big part of a flip being profitable is getting it done quick. 

Take the time to learn the business, and save up in the meantime. You don't want to buy yourself a job, you want to invest. It will be incredibly useful to have the knowledge you are learning right now, as you will be able to apply it to your flips, and ensure your contractor(s) aren't peeing on your back and telling you it is raining.