All Forum Posts by: Jordan Calaway

@Jonathan Greene Thanks for the info! I couldn't agree more. I have found tools are not a replacement for experience, they only help preform learned tasks faster.  My 20+ years in film construction has proved the best table saw doesn't make me a better builder if I don't understand the foundation of a movie set. 

@ Jon Schwartz Thanks! Next up is currently developing our 5 year "exit" strategy from the film business using real estate. Currently focusing on potential markets for small multi family and storage facilities. 

Investment Info:

Townhouse buy & hold investment in Valencia.

Purchase price: $506,000
Sale price: $252,000

First house at 26, got into a terrible loan and short sold to get out of it. It was an expensive lesson but I gained tremendous knowledge and experience about real estate, my self and life in general.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

At 26 I was ready to buy my first house as primary residence with plans of eventually buying a second investment.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

2006 being about the height of the market, I looked at 79 houses. Places that needed over $100K of rehab before I could even spend the night in them. At last the 79th home was the winner. Brand NEW home that had fallen out of escrow from the original buyer and the builder could not close the development and open the new one until this house was sold. It was next door to my best friend's house, who was also my agent.

How did you finance this deal?

5 year ARM with a $100k down, which was a loan from my mom.

How did you add value to the deal?

I walked into equity of almost $200k to do the builders circumstance.

What was the outcome?

My plan was to refinance ASAP which was a year at the time, get a locked in interest rate and pay back my mom. Well the market had other plans and by the time refinance came around I was under water. The neighborhood ended up with the highest foreclosure rate in Los Angeles County at the time.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

I learned you don't know what you don't know. I also learned waling through the loan process, don't let ANYONE influence you what you can afford. Only you can be that judge. It was a great experience learning how the system worked and can collapse. I also looked at the property as an investment but being young and naive, treated it like falling stock and dumped it to an investor. It worked out in the end, they rented to back to me for a great deal since they got a great purchase price.

Just wanted to share my recent mind altering experience about the B.P. calculators. Like most, I have clearly heard the importance of analyzing deals and how the B.P. calculators can and do help, especially if just learning how to analyze deals, like my self. After spending a little time this week figuring out how they work and running numbers of realtor.com and Zillow for experience, I am blown away about inaccurate my "thoughts" turned out to be at first glance of properties. I budget and manage huge construction projects in film industry and have learned a lot of hard lessons about the process in my profession. I am grateful to B.P. for creating the calculators to help with the learning curve in real estate and which there had been a tool like these in the film industry when I started!  Thanks B.P.! 

@Undrea King Thanks for the suggestion

WOW. Thank you all for the great information! It's all very useful stuff! More importantly thank you for spending time responding! I will relay some of this information and see what might interest my mom. @John Van Uytven thank you for the questions. Great starting place. @Thomas S. thanks for offering the help. I will run this all past my mom and see what she thinks. Thanks again all!

Hey all,

My mom is retiring next year at the age of 67 and her tax guy has suggested she gets into real estate to help lower her tax situation. She has made great money in the stock market and she has always been against real estate investing (fear). The question is where to start or suggestions to pass on to her? I know she would want low risk, passive income, and not a huge time investment. Any ideas? She and I are in such different areas of life.

Hey man that's awesome. The Hawaii market is definitely on my list, although for buy and hold for my self.My brother lives on the big island and I am lucky enough to visit often. I have fallen in love with Hawaii. I have even looked at coffee plantations for sale, I figure why not fulfill to passions? Good luck and I hope you become successful over there. It's definitely doable! 

@Michael S. I have considered house hacking. My former house I owned I rented out rooms while I lived there. As the market flipped so did my value. I short sold to an investor, which I then rented it back from them. At the time it saved me a ton of money. Of course now I wish I had rented the property and went to find myself another place to live. Why I didn't think of that before? Probably blinded by fear. In my current situation, various types of house hacking ideas aren't as appealing but I am always open to suggestion! 

Hello all. I am curious of other people's experiences in examing new potential markets, and how you may have arrived at those particular locations. What are the things that draw you to particular markets and what are you looking for in those markets? A friend once told me he looks for small curbside tables. Meaning when he sees restaurants either popping up or converting putting out small tables, turning into sidewalk cafes, he starts buying. He sees this as an up and coming market. I found this to be interesting and so far his theory for the last 20 years has been correct. What do you look for and where? I would think new schools would be a great indicator. 

Jordan