All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Greene

Those numbers are about 3x too low for any areas that will appreciate in Florida for what you are planning to do. Also, Florida is the toughest state on unlicensed contracting in the country because of what happened after Hurricane Andrew. If you aren't licensed in FL as a contractor I wouldn't count on swinging in and doing the work yourself being as easy as it seems. There are places in Florida where you can get closer to your numbers, but it is slow there and deals may be out there, but appreciation is low. You could look at an area like Deland which is more rural, but rents are ok.

A lot of the terms you are using are BP-friendly, but won't get you far investing in out-of-state markets. The BRRR method and house hacking and neighborhood grading systems are not always applicable or understandable across the board for who you will work with in each market. And if you don't have a marketing strategy, counting on owner-financed is not wise. That takes specific marketing and targeting, as will all areas where you will need to send a lot out to get very few leads and then they will want to know you are local and available.

Do nothing until a contract of some kind is signed. It doesn't have to be perfect. The closing date could be far off, but don't fix things without a contract. But unless you are a licensed plumber I would not fix anything in her house that has to do with plumbing. What happens when you leave and then it bursts?

I always do LLCs, they provide the most protection for what you are doing. If you want to get regular loans as the LLC though you will need 2 years of tax returns. You don't need PM software any time soon unless you have the capital to buy a lot right away, which it did not sound like it. Quickbooks or Freshbooks is fine in the beginning as long as you keep track of everything.

Do either of you have a background in flipping and prospecting for off-market deals?

You have to take a step back before you make another mistake. Your first deal was an absolute disaster and only by luck might you escape with a break even. And that was local. Now you want to go into a foreign market with no help and do it again? First, you have to pinpoint all of the areas you made mistakes on your first deal and think if you can solve them by going out of state. You also said you have looked at a lot of deals, but looking online isn't evaluating deals unless you are an experienced out-of-state investor. If you have seen no properties out-of-state in person and don't know the neighborhood, the block dynamics, the city growth from those inside the city, you haven't see any properties. Don't be so eager to invest that you make another bad play. From what you said above, there were more issues with the first deal and I'm worried about what that renovation looked like.

Besides the dogs, it's the best-case scenario you could ever ask for. One person is the best, I don't care how many bedrooms there are as long as they are vetted and can pay. Less people equals less wear and tear.

It's the same problem anywhere that forums are fully public-facing and especially prevalent in real estate where everyone is trying to sell you something or get something for nothing. I find the self-promotion just as bad as the low bar set for what is acceptable to post. Just as bad as someone creating posts about himself and how he is being sued and how this and that is the posts that just say Need Advice - what should I do as a new investor? That's it.

It's not BP's fault, there is just way too much coming in for the moderators to work with. And it's not BP's job to weed out stupid posts, but the self-serving ones should be flagged. I flag all the time, but never get an update if it went off the site or not.

Real estate is a business built on training people how to self-flagellate all day long. It doesn't work. I don't know why the self-promoters don't get that. Just add some value and wait for it to come back to you.

Definitely remove "ugly" and I agree that you should be a local business. You don't want to skew too "new" as an investor or else no one will trust that you know what you are doing. You have to understand that if you are using any lists, these people are getting similar cards so yours has to be different. I do think your message is more connective which I think is good (I would remove "not too low" as the joke), but why do they want to work with you? What is one thing you can give them that others won't? When they call the number back, will you answer? You need something else to stand out, but as cards go it's a solid start.

Some cards do better with some urgency. I use a 1031 dialogue which says something like I am closing a deal in your area now and I need to take that money and buy something else quickly...

You are the ideal mark for that play. You won't be able to supervise. You will end up losing money. I don't recommend passive investment in real estate to start because you won't know what you are doing. People recommend turnkey, but there are so many costs and high prices there with limited return. The only way to be good at real estate investing is to have the time to look and see what it all means in real life. Never do what you were about to consider. Never give your money to a deal that you don't have time to be on top of.

You don't sound like you have the time to search for off-market deals so you have to deal with the MLS. Everyone complains that there are no deals on the MLS, but it's not true. In every market you just have to be on top of the MLS to find the best deals. In my opinion, the best deals on the MLS can be found if you have your agent add an alert for Back on Market. This is when a property is Under Contract, but the deal fails. Any of those deals that are REO, short sales, are ready to go back into a deal and with short sales, you can often slide into the deal flow that was already moving as long as you can find out what really killed the deal.

You need an alert set for REO and distressed on the MLS and you also need to look on auction sites like Hubzu. Sometimes the property hits Hubzu at the same time as the MLS, but it only gets updated on the auction site.

@Nicole Heasley Beitenman exactly. That's smart and efficient. @Jacob Lamar, paying rent in NYC is a luxury that will continue to keep you down and your loans will stay up. 200k in loans, making 80-100k in NYC is going nowhere fast. Your first goal should be to see how to pay down quicker by moving up in your company more instead of investing out of state.