All Forum Posts by: Bill R.

Fantastic breakdown @Eric Fernwood.  

I'm a relative newbie to RE investing but I did work briefly for Realtor.com many years ago and remember the contentious nature of the relationship between tech and agents.  That was over 10 years ago and . . . agents are still around and access to data for the public has increased dramatically.    

I think in this BP circle of people, there are going to be many opinions that are on the fringe.  Someone buying 20 homes a year sees the value of an agent differently than someone who buys a home every 20 years.  And a large percentage of people who are buying and selling homes fall into the later group.    

Maybe there's room for different levels of service and thus different fees.  For instance, like they do in the stock brokerage industry.  You have discount brokers who supply reduced fees and let investors manage their own portfolio and there are full service brokers who can create and manage a portfolio, do tax planning, and estate planning but charge considerably more.  

The vast, vast majority of people do not want to learn about real estate.  They just want to buy a place to live.  They want someone to hold their hand and tell them which documents need signed and how to get a loan.  But there should also be an alternative for people who may know as much or more than the agent and simply need the purchase executed.  

Different strokes for different folks.  

 Welcome David.  I'm hoping to attend the above meetup.  Sounds like a good place to start (for both of us).  

 As I read all of these responses, I feel like I am some sort of anomaly.  I never owned a house until just very recently.  I rented my entire life.  I had (and have) a good credit score (almost in the excellent range).  

Not everyone wants to buy a home.  I never did (until recently).  I was single, loved to travel, and just didn't want the hassle of owning.  

Not sure you can assume that someone who has a good credit score isn't a renter. 

Fantastic and really cool video.  

Welcome, Jeff.  

@Eric Fernwood - Excellent post.  I think these principles are valuable to remember for any type of business.  

One possible gotcha for US citizens with foreign income is explaining your after-tax situation.  Because the IRS will exclude 90-something thousand in income from taxes, it creates some very interesting after-tax issues.  

For instance, I lived in a country that had a flat tax on income that I earned living there.  I still had to file and pay taxes in the us but the IRS excluded something like my first $90K in foreign earned income plus I received credit for taxes I already paid in the host country. 

Pre-tax my income was about $90K USD but the after-tax equivalent was something like $130K or $140K because all of my income was excluded from US taxes and I was paying almost nothing in foreign taxes.  

It wasn't an issue with banks when I returned (because I wasn't looking for a loan at the time) but many employers when I came back to the US assumed that I would be happy with a $90K salary when, in reality, to maintain my standard of living, I needed to make closer to $140K.   

Appreciate the suggestions from everyone.  From what I've read so far, I can already see this is an amazing resource.  

Thanks Paul.  Picked up J. Scott's book already.  Really eye-opening.