All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Greene

I'm not against investing with student loans outstanding @Nicole Heasley Beitenman, but to do so it has to be worth it. A turnkey investment in a town across the country will not make enough money and poses way too many risks for it to make sense based on the information above. Too many people try to make more money instead of paying down their debt more aggressively and then end up just spinning their wheels and getting nowhere. Some do it right, but this plan would not be good given where he lives and where he would be investing and the type of property.

Roommates are not a protected class, but you have to be careful that your seller is not using "roommates" to discriminate against protected classes. What's the rationale on no roommates? You have to see if the applicants would qualify as a protected class and then decide if "roommates" is a sham way around that. But if it's just someone who only wants to rent to one person and not two, that is legal even if it doesn't make sense.

The best way to find potential deals where owners would be willing to hold paper is to search for owners who own multiple properties in the same county. Then, drill down to see how long they have held these properties. If some of them have been held for 15+ years, they might want to get rid of the maintenance on one and take a chance on someone with owner financing. In my experience, the only sellers offering owner financing are ones who own multiple properties, don't need the cash, and like to release maintenance in favor of monthly payments and less headaches.

If you have 200k in student loans to pay off, do you really see this passive investment halfway across the country as the way to make enough to even dent something? Just because you are familiar with an area doesn't make it a smart first investment, but it is better if you know real people on the ground to manage. The real issue is if you can't pay cash for the investment in Memphis, do you really want to take out more loans to make a small amount each month, with 200k still to pay off in student loans. Everyone says invest now, invest with no money down, but if you scale it all the way back to caveman thinking - you already have a large loan outstanding, why do you want to put more loans on top of that, especially in an investment that you won't be near and that likely won't be turning great monthly numbers if you are looking for a turnkey solution.

Just to be clear, I did review @Konstantin Boubev's paperwork from the company and there was a groundwater issue where the testing was over the legal limit. So, in this case, the pricing is probably completely legit.

@Steve O. you need to see the report that it came back clean, but I'm a little confused as to what happened. When the tank is removed, it is either a leak or no leak per the town when the come out. If the town confirms there is leakage, you have to run the tests and do remediation. That test could come up clean. The town has to fail the tank when there are any holes that could have had leakage and when they remove and scrape the tank sometimes they make pinholes when doing it. The whole thing is a racket for some companies, but there are good ones.

I've never heard of a one-person tank removal company. It's not possible. How much total did you pay? Was there any remediation required and was it done? What paperwork have you received so far? To close everything you will need a NFA from the town saying that No Further Action is necessary on the tank. That's what you will need to sell the house eventually. Give me some more info on the costs. It could be ok, but there are a few fishy parts here.

Unless your condo is going to print money when you go, sell it now and use it to invest where you are going. The numbers on condos can be pretty tight especially if you need property management for one tiny unit. Even if you break even on the deal, there is no reason to hold it just to hold it. Unless Cincinnati is projected to go way up, which it's not, condos are tough to scale up in value because there are always new ones being built that will be better, pushing your value down.

There is no point to keep collecting alleged assets if you keep collecting debt along with it. How are your units doing each month? What is your market like for deals? How are you finding your deals? Why are you ready to do another deal now when you don't have liquid assets to do it? What about repair costs in the case of a big expenditure? How are your reserves?

Too many people want to collect doors at $100 profit/month and in doing so, collect debt and expenditures that will crash with the market. Take the time to build your 3 doors now into more profitable streams and bank the money before trying to get creative just to own another house.

I would never buy a property without knowing exactly what I was going to do with it. It seems that you are local, with the property, so that's good. But 10k buy with 15k in repairs doesn't add up for me in any market. Your repairs are likely going to be more than that. How did you come up with the reno budget? Do you have a contractor who bid it out?

Homes that cost 10k usually cost 10k for a reason. Because there is no upside. You really need to be sure about sale and rent numbers before you start a renovation. If your numbers don't work you might just need to eat in instead of wasting the time and money just to lose money every month if the numbers for rent don't work or if the market is unsellable on a block that a house just sold, to you, for 10k.

If you live in the Fresno area and did not do well investing in your own market, I wouldn't go investing in some other place where you will have even less oversight. You can't learn anything by investing in markets you aren't familiar with and you will have to rely on area "experts" to help you which can go very right and very, very wrong. Anyone can invest around where they live, at least in a 30-minute radius, it's just about how you find deals. Metrics and spreadsheets don't fix bad tenants, not knowing local ordinances for landlords, not understanding the configuration of neighborhoods. Unless you plan on finding a place where you also want to spend time, fix your hometown rental and learn from it and find the next neighborhood that is still affordable and find deals there.