All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Lubenko

Hello BP community, I have a few questions that I'm looking for advice on. I own a nice five acre plot in the city where I live in Northern California. I would like to develop the property with the main objective of providing some more affordable housing in my area while providing me with a moderate passive income through long term rentals. I know just by being a part of the community that there are not a lot of places for rent and it keeps getting harder and harder as we get more people moving here from out of the surrounding areas. My questions for all of you,

1. What kind of research should I do to determine what kind of project would best suit my specific market?  (Apartments, single family homes, condos, etc.)

2. In the state of California are there any incentive programs for building affordable housing that I should be aware of and where can I go to find them? (I'm sure I could check the state's resources on these topics but I think government websites take years off of my life so I'm asking you folks first.)

3. I've been looking for innovative solutions to the affordable housing dilemma in California and have come across a lot of startup companies creating pre-fab homes for fairly affordable prices that seem to be very high quality. This seems like a good way to keep rents low while not sacrificing the standard of living that people come to expect in newer rentals. Does anybody have any recommendations for pre-fab companies they have worked with in the past or are looking forward to working with in the future?

Thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing what you all have to say.

I’ve been analyzing and offering on houses a lot in the past couple of weeks trying to get my first deal. I found a duplex that is a little rundown and could use some work but if I’ve done my numbers correct, I would cashflow 200$/month/unit if purchased for 40,000$. The house is listed at 49,000$ and my REA suggests I offer 35,000$, however, I’m using conventional financing and can only go as low as 40,000$. So I’m in a pickle, should I offer 40,000$ and just deal with the fact that I could have got it lower? Do I just move on and try to find a deal within my approved mortgage range? I would like to follow her advice because this is my first deal and she’s been doing this for a lot longer than me and probably knows the value of the house better than me but I don’t want to miss a deal.

As I type my forum posts I usually end up answering my own questions and not posting it but I realize that it can’t hurt to hear what everybody has to say so I’m going to post this anyway with the conclusion I've come to.

My conclusion: I can hear the voice of Brandon Turner echoing in my head ”Your first deal isn’t going to make you rich or make you broke. It’s all about getting that first deal done, learning from it, and moving on to the next one. It takes a lot of energy to get a train started but once you get it going it’s hard to stop”. Basically, I realized that I shouldn’t be worrying over simple little things like this and I should get in with it and make an offer. Possibly getting a house for 5,000$ less is pretty inconsequential in the long run. Thanks for listening to my ramblings.

I'm looking to buy my first rental property and I just got pre approved for a conventional loan for 100,000$ through a recommended broker in the area. Everywhere I look online I see interest rates ranging from 3% to 5% but my broker sent me an approval for a loan with 6% interest. I have good credit (700+) and no derogatory marks on my credit report. Should I be okay with a 6% interest rate or should I go back to my broker and tell him to keep looking? I've run the numbers on a deal with the different rates and it could be almost 100$ difference if I had a rate around 3-4. Let me know what you think.

I have a friend through my local rotary club that is fairly wealthy and has always been very supportive of me and my interests in investing. He is selling his house and moving to Arizona but hasn't had any luck finding a buyer yet. Earlier tonight while at dinner he told me that if I could find someone to buy the house then he would give me 3% of the purchase price as a bonus. Now this to me seemed like an incredible opportunity because a large sum of cash would be insanely helpful in jumpstarting my real estate endeavors. The house is listed for 2.4 million and the majority of people I interact with are not millionaires (big surprise) so I'm not quite sure how I could go about finding a buyer for a house that expensive. Does anybody have any suggestions about finding high end buyers? The property is just outside of Sacramento, California so I think it would be most beneficial to market to people in the bay area that would like a home away from the city with vineyards and a great view of the central valley.

Thanks for reading my post and any feedback you might have would be greatly appreciated

-Jonny

@Chinmay J.

The city of Reno is a very appealing market and it would be nice to invest a little closer to home but it's just a little bit out of my price range unfortunately. Hopefully after I've built up my financial position from a few years of good investing I can start looking to invest closer to home. 

@Cameron Tope @Chinmay J.

Thank you guys for the advice this is exactly what I was looking for. I'll kick it into overdrive and take a quicker approach.

Hello everybody,

I just finished my first week in the 90 day journal of intention and I made some good progress towards my real estate goals.

Goal 1. Find a real estate market

This task was made a lot easier by referencing the spreadsheet that @JonathanSchwartz created which provides a great analysis of a towns growth and development. I also analyzed each city on the list in terms of vacancy rate, price to rent ratio and a median home value that was within my price range. I settled on three different markets that I will dive into researching more thoroughly this week and bring it down to just one. Once I'm focused in on one market I'll start looking for a good real estate agent in that area and hopefully start getting some leads coming in to analyze.

Does this seem like a good progression towards my ultimate goal of buying a property in 90 days? Any tips or tricks on finding a high performing agent?

The one thing I had trouble with this past week was finding time to work on my real estate knowledge. I usually listen to 1 or 2 podcasts a day at work but I need to find more time after work to read/research. To make more time for myself I'm going to plan on doing nothing after work two days of the week and dedicating that time solely to real estate. We'll see how this week goes.

Thanks for reading,

Jonny

@Hunter Ambos

That's very helpful thanks for the advice.

Hello everyone

I'm posting today looking for some advice. I have been trying to make better use of dividing my day into time blocks, this is recommended in alot of books I've read and is proven to be a very effective method of raising productivity. My problem is with my unpredictable work schedule which makes set time blocks very difficult to follow. I work in construction and I go to different jobs almost every single day, so depending on how far away the job site is and what time I need to be there, I wake up as early as 3:30 AM and get home as late as 9 PM. With such a random schedule and never really knowing when I'm going to get off work in the evening, is it even possible to use time blocking as an effective form of time management? Does anyone know of a time management method that is more suitable for this kind of schedule? Any other tips or time management advice would be awesome

I would really appreciate any advice on this.

Thanks for your time,

Jonny

@Diogo Alves Thanks Diogo! I will definitely make sure to do that.