All Forum Posts by: Jimmy Oldrich

I have most of a history degree from a state school, and I have been quite successful in demanding environments with lots of Ivy League competition.

If I had it to do over again, I would take out whatever loans I needed to get into the best school I could and network like crazy. If i were not in an Ivy, I would pick a major that would funnel me into a reliable paycheck. The Ivy club effect can give you more flexibility on degree choice.

I am all for pluck, but give yourself every edge you can. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, great. Things that make that job easier: funding, high-skilled employees, etc. Having the degree is a good signal for those markets as well.

Dismissing it as 3-6%, I think, distorts how much the commission cuts into the profits of a flip. You are buying based on a fraction of ARV. The 3-6% is on the ARV, not the cost to buy and rehab.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/02/corelogic-nars-2010-existing-home-sales.html

Heres a specific citation that suggests NAR is overstating, gives different data, and suggets possible reasons for the drift. National, not local, which is not as immediately practical, but maybe helpful in adjusting NAR numbers.

Biggerpockets is a better marketing platform than facebook will ever be. Biggerpockets enables brand advertising that facebook "marketers" should aspire to.

Facebook should be giving Biggerpockets their marketing demo information, not the other way round.

Just my .02

Hi all. Just getting back to this. Thanks for the feedback. I understood better what you were getting at when I thought more about it, Mark. Thanks again.

Lots of threads here on "out of state" investing, which appears more common here than out of country, but the issues are similar. You can try searching on "out of state"

Great examples Jon.

Weren't you saying in another thread that the "money partner" situation meant the non-money role was mainly project management?

I appreciate that these deals are often negotiated case by case.

I use online backups for financial data. I also use property managers, who have their own files, so that's another offsite backup. But probably a good idea to get their data protection policy as well.

I lost an ipad recently, and while I I was lucky and didn't particularly need to have it encrypted, I will certainly reconsider when I buy my next one.

There are a couple of full disk encryption products on the market, and they may be getting reasonably priced. There is increasing demand.

Health care organizations require encryption for HIPAA and many businesses are dealing with mandatory disclosure laws when they lose personally identifiable information of their customers, employees, or whomever. Some states have a safe hardbor provision that shields companies from disclosing if there's encryption. And if they do have to disclose, having encryption in place is better PR for them.

The onslaught of portable devices, not just laptops, but tablet computers and smartphones, is driving a lot of attention on this business risk.

Another general risk with condos: assessments that are out of your hands. While you have to budget for capital costs in any real estate investment, timing those outlays is sometimes not in your control with condos.

Also, and I'm working on old received wisdom here, so someone please step in if I've got this wrong, condo prices tend to fall faster and rise slower than surrounding SFRs.

Yeah, I was just looking to get an idea of the valuation since the offer seemed a little rich. But that the experienced people's first reaction was "possible scam" was pretty telling. Every state has its share of real estate operators of course.

The final on the mineral rights offer was some buyers shotgun out preliminary offers to see whether they have a taker, then do the diligence to see whether they are actually buying something of any value before closing the deal.