All Forum Posts by: Kyle Soudalan

@Cody Lewis you said "I quickly found what I needed was not part of the software functionality". What exactly did you need that those software couldn't provide?

https://www.amny.com/housing/new-york-crackdown-airbnb-begin...

I haven't seen too much discussion about NYC in general here (likely due to the high cost of housing and politics), but does everyone think this is effectively the end of short term rentals in NYC? 

My mom owns a long term rental (duplex) in Queens and to prepare for retirement, was thinking of making one of her units a short term rental. I told her a few weeks ago she might want to hold off and considering Airbnb given these legal changes, but curious what the BiggerPocket community thinks.

Besides "networking" and "knowing your market by talking to everyone in it", I am interested in efficient processes for speeding up one's search.

I get a lot of letters in the mail, texts, and phone calls from wholesalers and others trying to buy one of my properties. I know they found my info by checking county assessor offices, but is this the best way to find out who owns a property? It seems tedious when hunting for deals to:

1. Go to a local assessor's office / county's website,
2. Click around until you find the "Property Search" section (since every county has a different website/database),
3. Enter the address you're interested in,
4. Click around until you find the name of the owner (if not hidden behind some LLC),
5. Try to find them online if some PII (e.g. phone number) is not listed,
6. Reach out to the owner with an offer.

It seems painfully slow and inefficient for wholesalers and others looking for off-market deals to do this. If you were hunting for deals like this in a few select counties/markets, how would you optimize this process?

@Bob Stevens I meant, you're pulling comps as part of your process to analyze a deal, right? So as part of that analysis, after you're done with the step to pull comps, for everything you do between then and closing on a deal, involves a lot of work. Regarding all of that work, is there anything you think could be automated that would either free up your time to close on deals faster or help you profit more on a deal?

I do agree with a lot of the commenters here that pulling comps is the "easy" part, and everything that follows from there is where software could capture more value. There's likely so much competition at the comps stage that it's commoditized at this point.

I would be curious to hear from others, like @Nicholas L. or @Bob Stevens what parts *after* pulling comps they feel could possible be automated without falling into non-scalable traps like iBuyers ran into once they tried scaling their algorithms.

Today I learned that there is a "LinkedIn for Physicians" and other medical professionals: https://www.doximity.com/

Really successful company that apparently has over 80% of all physicians in the US in their network.

Why do you think this doesn't exist for Real Estate? Meaning, a separate platform for facilitating regular networking and deal flow for real estate professionals (investor <--> property manager <--> contractor <--> etc.) who are constantly trying to find leads for different services.
It feels like Q&A / blog platforms are outdated, harder to organize / search, doesn't provide ample analytics data for individual users, and is very hit or miss (particularly because real estate is so local, so it's tough on these platforms to constrain things to specific markets).

Investors are constantly looking for the best contractors to take jobs, and contractors are constantly looking for jobs to take. How is this search facilitated today? I get the sense this is mostly done through word-of-mouth or referrals, but if you're just getting started or new in the area and don't have the network, what solutions are there?

I know the obvious "you need to get out there and network!" Most people don't know how to network well, so what other solutions are there? Either for the investor/property manager or the contractor?

@Eliott Elias How would you recommend finding good contractors more efficiently?

I see a lot of posts here every day where someone is asking for tips on how to find a good agent, property manager, attorney, contractor, etc. Particularly those looking to invest in a city where they don't live in or analyzing an out-of-state deal. And then several folks will say "you need to build a good team first." 

But how exactly do you build a good team? From what I've seen, it seems to be making posts here or in Facebook groups to crowdsource and sift through dozens of responses. And then it becomes tough to know who's talking their book or referring folks to friends, who may or may not actually be good at their jobs.

This might seem like a silly question, but if very little changes with a property over the course of a few weeks or months, why does each prospective buyer have to re-pay for essentially the same report? Wouldn't it be better (cheaper, faster) if there was a fair third-party who conducted the inspection and appraisal reports and made those publicly available to all prospective buyers? And then every fixed time-period (3-months, 6-months, location-specific), a new inspection or appraisal could be conducted. 

Yes, someone has to pay for these, but that's a separate matter.