All Forum Posts by: John Williams

I’d like to hear your opinions... could this be a good opportunity to buy Airbnb (or other short-term rental) properties?

Seems there are likely some Airbnb hosts who don’t know when their rental income will return to normal and would prefer to just cut their losses and sell the house.

Obviously this will vary from one market to the next, but generally speaking, is this a good time to approach Airbnb property owners about buying their home?

@Paul Shannon my apologies, I stand corrected. It was @Thor Sveinbjoernsson who incorrectly reported the size of the fed balance sheet.

@Paul Shannon The Fed’s balance sheet is $7 trillion, not $27 trillion.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm?mod=article_inline

@Ben Kirchner Thanks for sharing! I've been searching Wake County for months and have found it very difficult to find turnkey properties meeting the 1% rule. Glad to see that it can be done with enough hard work!

Any secrets to your success that you'd like to share? Are you primarily using a realtor to find potential investment properties?

@Andreas Schneider, I've heard others discuss this approach (securing the property in your personal name and then transferring the deed to an LLC). However, I have two questions.

Some people have indicating that transferring the deed to an LLC can lead to the bank calling the loan. Have you heard of that / does it concern you?

It seems that purchasing the property 'personally' and then transferring it to an LLC might be considered a 'piercing of the corporate viel', thus eliminating any limited liability protection the LLC would've otherwise provided. Thoughts?

@Cole Holloway, I'm glad to see that someone else is asking the same question. I've been torn trying to decide how to allocate capital.

Over the long run, the stock market returns 7-10%. And the Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ) has returned 9.1% since inception. So it seems that I'll need to find real estate which generates a cash-on-cash rate of 9%+ if I want to exceed the returns available in the stock market (and that's not even factoring in all the time and effort that goes into a real estate investment).

Frankly, that's the only reason I haven't invested in real estate yet. I've found it difficult (in my local area) to find properties with a cash-on-cash rate exceeding 9% (except for rehab properties, but my full-time job keeps me too busy to fix-and-flip).

I'll be interested to hear other people's opinions on the matter. It seems to me that real estate investing doesn't make sense unless you can get a cash-on-cash return in the double digits.

Is it possible to scrape Zillow?

@Corby Goade, thanks for the feedback. But I have to ask - isn't it worth waiting until Q3/Q4 to see the wave of foreclosures coming through? With so many people unemployed, it seems inevitable that foreclosures will hit the market once the mortgage forbearance periods end. No?

I used to live in Wilmington. Landfall is a very nice neighborhood if you can afford it. 

I don't know what your budget looks like, but if I had the money, I would consider Landfall or Wrightsville Beach areas. There are also some great areas in downtown Wilmington.

Hey all - I've been thinking about real estate investments for several months now and learning a lot from this forum. I'm interested in finding a SFH property to cash-flow. I'm too nervous to buy an out-of-state property as my first investment, so I want to stay local (Raleigh/Durham, NC area). The problem is - this area is a seller's market and I haven't been able to find any properties that meet my criteria. (I could make a nice return on a fix-and-flip, but my full-time job keeps me very busy, and I can't invest the time in a rehab.)

So in a nutshell, I've been waiting for a market correction so I can find properties at better prices. Do you all expect that COVID will result in a reduction in home values? With 30m+ people out of work, it seems there will be a wave of foreclosures in late summer (after the 90-day mortgage forbearances have come and gone).

So how do I play the market? Should I wait until the summer/fall and begin looking at foreclosures? Or are there other strategies you'd suggest?