All Forum Posts by: Justin Black

@C Hark I would be lying if COVID didn't make me second guess investing. As long as you have done your homework/due diligence and feel like you are making a well-informed decision and it is within your risk tolerance you should go for it. There will always be reasons that may make you question whether an investment is worth it - it is all about your ability to mitigate risk through well-informed decisions. Good luck and wish you the best in the future! 

@C Hark - Would you be able to expand on what you mean by 'I came in and read the news'? I think now is a great time to invest and will be actively searching for Multi-Family properties myself. 

Going off of @Elizabeth Chiang comment, people still need a roof over their heads. My partner and I are following the same mindset and looking into B and C neighborhoods. As individuals from A neighborhoods may have issues paying higher rents due to the current state of the world/economy, they will find themselves drifting to areas where rents are more affordable. Based on the above thought process, if you are trying to find investment properties in B and C neighborhoods, now may be the best time to invest. 

All of the above is a personal opinion so please make sure to do your hw before committing to a rental property. The market you are investing in can have different influences that may impact your ability to find steady cash-flowing properties. 

Hey Victoria - BP provides great calculators (Rental, BRRRR, Rehab Estimates) to assist with analyzing the property itself. You can also use sites like https://www.rentometer.com/ to understand rent comps in the market you are trying to acquire properties in. For sales comps, your agent can assist there or you can use Realtor.com to see similar homes that sold recently within your market. 

Hope the above helps and good luck! 

Justin

Hey Kai - I am certainly in the same boat at you. I work in tech which is certainly a grind. I usually find myself on the computer by 7 am working close to 12+ hours and then getting in additional hours over the weekend. The concept of 'finding time' to dedicate to REI is something I am still adjusting to.

One way to assist here is to simply find a business partner who will be willing to take on 50% of the work. We spun up an LLC to purchase properties under and within our operating agreement/business organization documentation we highlight who will own what part of the process. By dividing and conquering, we are able to gain efficiencies through each part of the REI process and essentially reduce the total amount of work each individual needs to own. Not to mention, we each have unique core competencies that thankfully complement one another.

Regarding location, I am in Los Angeles and my partner is in NYC, which is similar in price point to the Bay. We decided that out-of-state investing was best for us and landed on the Lehigh Valley market. During our market analysis, we made sure to outline what an acceptable outcome would be for us when acquiring any given property. We fully expect to see cash-flow from day 1, but it will be minimal. For us, it is the experience and momentum of locking down a deal that is most important. 

The advice I would give to you is to make sure you understand what your unique goals are and then work your way backwards to find the right markets and properties. Once you know your end goal, it is a matter of knowledge, hustle and time before you hit those goals. 

Hope this helps! 

Justin

Hello BP Community! 

I am just getting started on my REI journey and wanted to see how the rest of the RE world is leveraging technology to meet their unique goals. Currently, my partner and I are looking into MultiFamily properties in the Lehigh Valley market in Pennslyvania. Using the BRRRR model, we are hoping to acquire a portfolio of cash-flowing properties that we will hold for the longterm. With that being said, I know that we will eventually need a CRM to supercharge, automate, and streamline our business and ultimately allow us to lock down more properties at a faster rate.

I personally come from a tech background, having worked as a Salesforce engineer for the past several years. While Salesforce is an amazing CRM and can be developed to do just about anything you need, I am curious if there are other CRM platforms that may better be suited for real estate investing. I have heard of others using HubSpot, but beyond that, I am not sure what would be considered a viable option.

For those using CRMs currently....

1. What CRM are you using? 

2. Why did you choose that platform?

3. What is unique in the way you are leveraging your CRM?

4. What is the greatest benefit to using your CRM of choice and how has it positively benefited your business?

Thanks in advance for the feedback and insights :) 

Justin

This is tremendous - thank you so much for posting your journey and learnings! Out of curiosity, I saw you mentioned that you will be using a CRM. Curious what CRM you will be leveraging on your end and how it relates to this project?

Hey Chris, 

I am a Salesforce Engineer getting my feet wet in REI. While, right now, we are not a place to implement technology to automate our deal-flow due diligence, it is my hope to use SFDC in this fashion.

Ultimately, my end goal would be to use APIs for lead generation, automate basic qualifying data points based on our personal acquisition criteria (location, potential rents per unit, AVR, rehab costs, etc.) to eliminate the manual element behind analyzing deals. The hope here is to minimize the number of deals we look at to only those that are deemed qualified. This will allow us to only invest time and energy on deals we believe are a good fit for us and discard the rest. 

Additionally, we would use it to track revenue for properties we close as well as capital expenditures to log rehabs done over the lifetime ownership of the property. Hopefully, we can use this as a means of being proactive in predicting when future rehabs will be needed (i.e. original roof was 25 years old at purchase, 10 years remaining until we need to re-do it based on the general lifespan of roofing in that area)

From there, we will also use the system to automate marketing touchpoints, keep up to date on what agents, contracts, PM's, lenders we are using in each market and hopefully generate robust reports to allow us to understand data point on properties we did close or did not close (i.e. sales price, current listing price, etc. for properties we did not acquire.) 

I am currently looking into ways to pull the above off as we ramp up our operations and start locking down properties. I would love to hear your perspective on the above! 

Thanks, 

Justin

Thanks, Moises. I appreciate the response. 

We are using a local realty group to source deals. They will also dual as a PM once we are able to close a deal. 

I see that you have some extensive experience REI. Any tips for a someone at my level?

I am new to the REI world as I am trying to lock down my first deal with a business partner. We are currently looking in the Lehigh Valley area with a focus on Multi-Family homes that will cashflow day 1 and not come with too many headaches. We have been analyzing deals in the market for several weeks, but have yet to find a property that truly fits our acquisition criteria. We are in this for the long haul and will continue to do our due diligence on properties until we find the right one. As they say, nothing good comes easy!

With that being said, I am curious to see how long it took others to close their first property? 

How many deals did you analyze to get to close your first property?

How many offers did you put in to finally close on deal #1? 

Curious to hear others experiences as we continue the journey on our end :) 
 

5x Certified Salesforce Engineer! Just getting my toes wet in RE. Located in Los Angeles, CA., and investing in the Lehigh Valley, PA area.

Looking to connect with like-minded individuals across the country :)