All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Greene

There are great spots all over NJ, but you will get the best return closest to NYC with walkable train access in many cases. Of course, it is all location and property specific. Montclair is very hard to break into with overbidding. Bloomfield is even tough, but can be profitable. I know why people don't prefer Orange and East Orange, but the train access is excellent and you can do very well. We are mailing for off-market properties all over Essex now, multis included so let me know if I can help in any way. I know Essex like the back of my hand, Bergen, Union, Passaic, Morris. The issue here is the taxes on a hold, they are way higher than most would expect so you need to be in a spot where the on-ground metrics make sense especially when you are out of state.

How many properties have you evaluated in person so far? Too many people think they are ready to invest just by learning, but a lot of the learning is general and not market-specific. Have you ever rehabbed a home? Do you know all the things to look for? Doing a flip as a first investment is very difficult without experience and proper guidance. If you are planning to house hack, that is usually a good option for a first investment because you can learn about landlording while also being on-site and able to leave when you want to. What would your plan be to do a moderate flip with only 20-30k liquid? Would you use hard money? Would they finance 100% of the renovation? In order to start investing, you have to get out and see properties every week so you understand what off-paper investments look like outside of calculators and formulas. How are you going to find deals? These are all questions and things to consider.

There is plenty of info out there about it, but it's not easy to find and complete a seller-financed transaction without experience. It can be done, but you are looking for a particular type of seller. One who does not need lump sum money to live and/or doesn't want to pay capital gains and would rather get monthly payments as a sort of social security. The real question is what are you doing in marketing to find these types of sellers?

Why would anyone sign that contract? They agree to sell to you at a dirt-cheap price, but only if you can find someone in 30 days to sell it to at an improved price for you. It basically tells them you have no skin in the game and no money to buy their home so there really is no point for them. I also don't understand the MLS part, which defeats the whole purpose of offering wholesale services in the first place. It only goes on the MLS if they sign a listing agreement and that is a completely separate strategy used by investor/agents. Basically, no. You can write whatever you want into an off-market contract, but you aren't doing anything to help your business or the seller to get out whatever jam they are in.

If you are 7 hours away and don't have a local contact, I would not AirbnB at all. In some highly prevalent AirBnB areas there are managers who can do a one-off. Not property managers, but quasi-hosts for Airbnb. But without that and a dedicated cleaning crew and knowing that the place will be clean for the next guests, it will not be worth it. But I find the same issue with a long-term rental when you are 7 hours away. Why hold the property instead of selling and investing closer to you where you can have more control and knowledge?

Getting your license is a fairly easy thing to do, but it depends on your goals. Most, if not all, agents who try to be an agent with a full-time job fail. You can figure out a way to transition from one to the other, but there are monthly fees and costs associated with being an agent. If you are interested in investing, go to local REI meetups and network with similar-placed people first, just starting out, get information, build relationships and see what parts of real estate you think you might like the most.

The commission is due to your brokerage so there is nothing you can do with it to alter that. No brokerage will allow you to roll it into closing costs, as a buyer and agent representing yourself, and avoid them getting their split unless they have a personal deal policy. Most brokerages have a one a year personal deal policy. When you buy representing yourself, it's the same as representing someone else. The seller's brokerage is giving you the commission per the MLS agreement. You can't alter that.

I've done both. We did very well on Homeaway for years, but more municipalities are placing more restrictions on them. 30-day stays in many places or taxed. It depends how close you live to the property and how much involvement you want. Long-term renters, a year or more, are usually good and take care of minor things. AirBnB people call right away, even when you leave a manual, because they don't know how to work the toaster or the neighbors are loud. If you prefer to be hands-off then short-term rentals are not for you. To succeed you have to go above and beyond and the units require a lot of cleaning in between. Short-term renters like that are very review conscious and will hold a good review over you and a bad review can kill you so you have to be like a concierge to succeed against other properties in your area. But if you can, and the demand is there in your area for visits, you will make more money.

Too many people get caught in this "what should I say" stage, but you have to just get something out. You will always get negative blowback from a I want to buy your house campaign, but that is the cost of doing business. Just use Yellow Letters and choose a most used message, short and sweet, and send them out. But, what system do you have in place to capture the information? Are they all just calling your cell? That is not efficient. There are other systems that may work better if you are mailing 2,000, even with a 1% call back. People forget when they mail that they have to available for the calls back if they don't have a system in place and when they call back you need to know their address when they say it and the highs and lows of the block. I have VAs field all the calls in and I only go on appointments because I have found that phone calls beforehand are a waste of time and I want to see the property no matter what to see if it's even worth the time. So, just get something out there, but be prepared.

Glad it helped @Stephanie Sicard. The forums and calculators and podcasts are all awesome, a treasure trove, but none of it is real and understood until you see as many dumps as you can to see if what you are putting into the spreadsheets is accurate and also whether you understand all the parts of the formula in real life. This is where I think many new investors are missing out. They are so amped to get a first deal that they don't look enough. It's hard to get an agent who will show you a ton of garbage, but it's the only way to really learn. When you've seen 50 properties, doing the formula is a much different exercise.