All Forum Posts by: Ke Nan Wang

Hi Will,

Welcome to the BP Forum. I'm a real estate investor with an active real estate sales associate license and a general contractor license in FL. 

Licensing laws are state specific so I can only provide insights to you based on Florida licensing laws. Illinois could be different or similar but please verify. 

1. In FL, to get a real estate sales associate license, we sign up for a 64 hr pre-req class, passing the class will allow you to take the state exam, passing the state exam we will get our sales associate license, which most of the real estate agents are. Sales associates only allowed to work under an active real estate brokerage (RE/MAX, Keller Williams, Century 21, etc for your big name brand or you can go with the local boutique mom and pop office). In FL and I believe in many states, you need to maintain the sales license for 2 years (or 3 years in some other states) in order to be eligible to take the broker's exam and obtain the broker's license. When you obtain your broker's license, you can either a.) start your own brokerage, with that you can choose to grow your business and recruit more sales agents to work for you, or be a solo-agent broker, or something in between. or b.) decide to continue working under another brokerage, essentially staying as a salesperson but with a broker's license, which term: Broker Associate. And in FL, a real estate license will let you earn a commission on any real estate related transactions: residential, commercial, business only with no real estate properties, property management, real estate consulting, etc. 

In summary, if you were in FL, a broker wears the business owner's hat, there is no way to become a broker without having at minimum 2 years experience under your belt. And if you want to do sales and make big money on your own, stay as the sales associate is the way to go. 

2. You can be a part time agent, but don't expect to be a successful one. Everyone I know in this industry fall in the two category: 

a.) Not making enough money as a real estate agent and decided to not keep their license active at the licensing renewal time and go back to their primary job. 

b.) Making too much money, way more than their primary job and they decided to go full time and quit their old job. 

I have never seen a successful real estate agent doing this for more than 5 years as a side hustle. 

3. To find a good broker, first you need to decide what do you want to do. Do not focus on the commission split. Training and mentorship is much more important than a few percentage in the long run. If you like to keep things flexible and low cost just to feel things out, then go with a virtual broker office with 100% commission on the agent side and they don't have any commitment required for sales agent. If you would like to make lots of money ($300k to $500k a year or even more in very expensive areas) and be a very successful real estate agent, then you gotta hustle and look for the broker that runs a successful sales team. I also see lots of mediocre agents just makes ends meet and half *** in their job and just survive. The good ones maybe breaks 6 figure in commission but average agents make about $40 to $80k a year. 

Hope this helps answering some of your questions. If you want to talk more, feel free to dm me. Personally I fall in the category of a real estate investor with a real estate sales agent license. I'm not a mega bucks top producer but I've been with REMAX and small boutique brokerage. Everything I said it's from my perspective either personal experience or conversations I have with lots of real estate colleagues. 

A fence shouldn't cost that much. My average fence around a 5k sq ft property cost range from $5k-8k depend on the scope.

In real estate transaction, when you close, it's usually AS-IS unless you have hard evidence that the seller knowingly and purposefully hid information that has negative impact on the value of the property at the time of the sale. Also your legal fees can easily be the loss you are describing. So if you don't have hard evidence, I wouldn't waste the money and time. Just remember, only lawyers are the winner out of a legal battle. Even if you win and get paid 20-30k and your legal fee (best case scenario), how about the time lost and the attention and headache dealing with the case over the next 6 month to a year? 

You can try to settle out of the court and see if the seller and realtor would like to settle on something. Worst case you get a NO. But it costed you little time and no legal fees. 

property manager is tenant relationship. If you are thinking about maintaining a property, you better off hiring a good handyman to do the repairs instead of doing it yourself. The PM is gonna charge you to manage the property and any repair cost on top of that, so be ready to give out a decent chunk of your revenue in exchange for a peace of mind (assuming you hire a good PM).

If you are tired of doing PM's work, definitely hire a good one. Almost all of my investor friends do. I leverage technology and my network of people to maintain my properties. Over years I've developed a pretty robust system and people's skills to deal with tenants. Tenants do not give me as much headache as what they give to the average people. So if you want to do DIY landlord at the elite level and save a decent money, just know it's doable. But it takes time, effort and dedication to build a system and acquire the skills to do so. Once it's done, it's pretty auto pilot. I save over $70k in PM fee each year because I DIY. And I can assure you my KPI is better than any PM I can hire in town. And honesty, I spend very little time dealing with my tenants. And you can take my word for it, all of my tenants are happy tenants and they appreciate me.  

Personally, I would hire a PM if it's out of my area. If I grow out of my capacity, I would hire an employee to assist me vs a PM. 

Please interview a different number of agents to list your property. Do not use your PM to sell. 

I would ask the agent their specific marketing plan. What can they do to put the right eye balls on your property. 

In today's age, any agent who simply puts a lockbox on and list a property with professional photographs on a MLS and call it done does not deserve 6% commission. That's 4.5 or 5 at best.

I don't mind paying 6% if the agent works hard to get results, and be the Johnny on the spot for me. 

You have two decisions to make, one is about the property and one is about the contractor:

About the property

1. Sell it as-is and guarantee a loss

2. Find another reliable contractor and finish the job and sell and may gain an upside.

About the contractor, he's fired for sure, but now should you:

1. Stop the bleeding and write it off as a loss?

2. Go after him in court. You can probably take him to small claim, that's the cheapest you can do and you can DIY this. At a minimum, you have a judgement over him and that may help you recoup some money later down the road if he ever wants to do anything in the finance world.

There will be many lessons to be learned in REI. As long as you don't quit, you will wear the battle scars and become a seasoned real estate investor.

Any lending product that I can offer to my buyer clients where they couldn't get into their house they wanted before and now because of your product, they can is how a loan officer can help us. 

If you reach out to me and your product is the same thing everyone else is offering in terms of rates and origination fee then I'm not that interested. 

Yes, some LO who lacks products and would like to sell their good services but to me, that's more icing on the cake than the necessity, and a good service should be the standard, not something you advertise to stand out.   

Same standard should go to realtors. The job is to help buyers find deals they can't find themselves and market/sell houses they can't sell at the price they want within reason. Good services and smooth closings are icing on the cake and should be the minimum standard. If a Realtor can't find deals or sell houses, the rest doesn't matter.  

At the end of the day, we are helping people solving problems. That's what's most important and separate the pros vs the noobs. If I have a problem and you can solve it for me, you are my favorite person. 

 Let's connect and I'll keep you posted on the progress. 

 Awesome, would love to connect with you. 

I'll be there. It's my first time and I'm coming from St. Augustine, FL. Love it for the short distance from home. Would love to connect with people around the world. 

I'd recommend to have someone who has done an eviction in your local jurisdiction to walk you through the process or hire an attorney to do it. The US legal system in general is designed to not be friendly to nonlawyers, especially on the plaintiff side. Some small procedural mistake can got your case delayed or worst case, dismissed. If your notice wasn't done correctly, the judge can ask you to redo the notice. 

In my jurisdiction, a notice can be either a copy posted on the door, hand delivered in person or mail it to the address via a certified mail. No text, email, or phone call. 

If a tenant is month to month, the law allows landlord to terminate a lease without cause as long as proper notice is delivered. I've heard other areas aren't the case.