All Forum Posts by: Joseph Labit

Thank you all for the help. And yes the property management company is inhouse, So I will might even make her part owner of the management company to make it a little more legitimate. Will be a lot harder to make her owner of the properties since we have bank loans on those.  

Hello, I have a W2 job and my wife is currently a stay at home mom that does help out with my rental portfolio, but not up to the 750 hour minimum . I was thinking about getting her more involved in the business and claiming her as a real estate professional. Currently the properties are in LLCs owned by my business partner and I. We have 3 commercial properties with 95 tenants and have our own in house property management business that is also owned by my business partner and I. I asked my accountant and he said I can not do it unless her name is on the Properties.  Is this correct? He does not specialize in real estate and did not see to know much about the REPS, So I would like to get a second opinion.  

Thank you for your insights! We do not have a loan on the property, but at some point we would like to do a cash out refinance. I did run it by our lender and they said it would not be a problem since they will only occupy 8% of the building. But you are right, my biggest concerns is that it will be hard to sell or get a loan. I did not think of the insurance part so i will have to look into that as well.

I have a retail property that has a vacant space listed for lease. We were approached by a Cannibas dispensary company that wants to lease it out. According to the village ordnance, our building is one of the only if not the only one that is able to have a dispensary. This company wrote us an LOI at the asking price we had listed. Of course that price was for a "Normal" business. My question is what is the going rate for a dispensary? The current asking price is $15NNN, should we be asking for a premium on top of that? Besides the obvious, Is there any other possible down sides that I am not thinking of with having a dispensary. thank you in advanced

My wife and I are looking to buy a new home or lot and have a new home built. I found a new construction home in a subdivision that is in the final close out. One is the national home builders. They have 7 lots left and they are putting spec homes on 5 of the lots. The other 2 lots they are offering as a double lot option to the adjacent lot. They are only charging 13k extra for the double lot option. Each lot is .33 acres. A lot that size in this worth around 75-80k. I am wondering what the catch is? They have 2 pins. Homes are being built on the left, right and rear of the home so I assuming the lot is buildable. The sales lady did tell me that they did a soil test and found higher levels of sand in the soil so it would be more expensive to build, but she said they will build on it if the double lot option is not taken. They did offer the same deal on 2 other lots in the subdivision, but they ended up splitting them up and building on both lots. Wondering if I should take both lots and try to sell the second one off or possibly build on it later? How would I find out the extra cost of building on a lot with sand? Would it be closer to 10-20k extra? Or something crazy like 75-100k extra?

@Dave Foster you are 100% correct. We are in 2 different places. He just retired, so he does not want to take any risk and I have a lot more risk tolerance. Unfortunately it is family and realistically I only have 2 options. Do nothing and continue to get a safe decent return or convince him to expand with me. He would not really be able to manage them without me, so splitting them would not work. I have tried to use the rental property calculator to show him the projections, but of course he just keeps thinking the market is going to crash again. Maybe I will try to go the route @Bob E. Suggested and see if he will Refinace or heloc to purchase instead of 1031. That way I can spin it as “diversifying” our portfolio. In the mean time I did start purchasing my own properties with out him, so I can focus on growing as an investor. Thank you all for the suggestions!

My dad and I purchased 3 condos together back in 2011-2012. We paid around 50k each and they are now worth around 100k each. We own them free and clear. My dad is very conservative and happy with the cash flow that they bring in, but I would love to trade them in for something larger. They are still getting a decent return (8% return on equity, 16% cash on cash) and they have good long term tenants in place also. Any advice on how to convince him to trade up with a 1031 exchange or even refinance to pull some equity out and use that to buy more?

@Kumar Paj I would try Gary Davidson with castle law. He does more investor deals than any other attorney in the area.

@Youri Val I would start with hours and hours of reading books, listening to podcasts, and watching YouTube videos about real estate investing. After you have a good knowledge base you can pick whatever strategy would work best in your market. Depending on where your at in your life, I would say house hacking would be the easiest way to start.

@Justin K. It depends what your goals are, but if you want to scale you have to learn how to use OPM (other peoples money). Everything that I learned when I was younger was to pay off everything as soon as possible and live with little to no debt. As I transition into becoming a real estate investor I find it hard to accumulate that amount of debt. I try to only accumulate debt that other people pay for then I don’t feel so bad.