All Forum Posts by: Joshua Chen

Tapping into portfolio lenders would be a great idea. They usually allow you to cross the four mortgage limit. Some even allow you to have out as many mortgages as you can feasibly sustain!

Yeah I would also say to diversify your marketing. Look to tap into other sources besides direct mail. Some sources, such as social media, don't even cost you anything!

You could always search up portfolio lenders online! That's what I've been doing to find portfolio lenders in California.

Welcome to BP, David!

Feel free to reach out should you need anything!

hm.. there shouldn't be anything illegal about mailing people, as long as there isn't anything threatening/dangerous in the content of the letters, and as long as the mail isn't sent out in a perpetual and harrassing manner. I do have to warn you though, some people REALLY don't like direct mailers because they think you're an advertisement company or etc, even though you're just innocuously asking for property sales, so be prepared for some nasty/rude responses to be sent back to you.

You could use your home address as the sender if you don't have a company location. You could either compile research on who's likely to sell, like a sellers list, although that will probably take quite some effort, or just send at random. The thing is though, when you're sending direct mail, you want to send them in mass. This is because the portion of responders will be a small percentage of all that you send, and the portion of actual good deals will come from a small percentage of those. You'll also want to send on a consistent basis, like mailing out every X period of time, as mailing out in random time intervals isn't as likely to produce results. Hope this helps! 

Um.. I'm not really sure this is the right forum section for this.. this would probably go more under "personal finance"

But more on topic, I personally believe real estate is the way to go. Not only because Bigger Pockets is dedicated to real estate, but historically speaking, real estate has just always had a general trend of going up. The mantra is that "people will always need a place to live." Also, unlike stocks, bonds and/or other forms of investment (except possibly commodities), real estate isn't just a piece of paper that has symbolic value based on people's perception of it - it has the unique benefit of being collateralized by an actual, tangible asset, namely property/land. What this means is that, worst comes to worst, paper assets can lose value the moment people say so, but property and land will always have value because they are valuable intrinsically, in and of themselves. Bigger Pockets also has a number of articles and videos that talk about how many wealthy people have said that real estate is the surest and most reliable way to riches. About your inflation concern, I want to point out that real estate as an asset is actually one of the strongest hedges against inflation (it protects you from diminished value caused by inflationary effects). There are many reasons for this, but to illustrate one example, when inflation rises, buying power drops - people have a harder time affording down payment for personal residences. Naturally, this means they will turn to rentals for their shelter. Demand for rentals increases; supply of rentals decreases. Greater rents can then be charged. So what does this mean for the owners of investment rental properties? They actually get *more* cash flow from the effects of rising inflation! Investment properties are valued based on how much cash flow they generate, so this also means that the investment property owners get to nab free equity just from the effects of their properties appreciating. Like @Chris Gonzales said, the best thing you can do for yourself before doing anything else is getting educated. I hope this provides some insight for you! Feel free to add me as a colleague, and I can give you more tips on getting started.

And um.. off topic again, but how do you expect us to meaningfully help you if you won't even trust us enough to tell us the real area you live in? We know nothing about your market's circumstances, the economic climate of your region, etc and to say your area is "rather diverse" is very.. vague, ambiguous, and could refer to any number of things..

I hope that doesn't come off insulting, because I don't mean it that way.

Welcome to BP, Mark! Feel free to connect with me and become a colleague :)

Congratulations on the business venture and good luck!!