All Forum Posts by: Manraj Singh

Hey guys!

Looking for the extra push to sell or hold my southern California condo. I have about 200-220k of equity in my place. After owning for 6 years, my expensive HOA (340/month) is really dampening my cash flow. I actually am paying roughly 100/month to keep it and run it after all fees. Looking at cap rates, it is at 2.67%. Would you recommend selling since my tenant leave at the months end in July and buy more property or would you find this place worth keeping. It is worth noting that I bought with VA in 2016 so it was fully financed so that is why after 6 years I am still having to pay a small amount AND the market rents are at least 2600/ month which is a 450 increase from previously rented (I had a long term renter for the past 3 years so rents were low.) My concerns with keeping are the HOA and just how the housing market in SoCal looks. Reasons to keep are that I will FINALLY be able to cash flow a little bit this year if we decided to keep, plus we have enough capital to buy another property in other markets. Thank you to any input and opinions or solutions!

-Nick

I'm 24 and currently at the end of my military career (I separate in 6 months) and have been interested in the Real Estate sector for years but don't personally know any agents that could help me really get a real picture of their day to day work. I've read a fair amount of books and done research into licencing and would love to get a better idea of the profession. Really I am looking for anything from a quick conversation over lunch to someone that would be willing to put up with me as a shadow for a day if possible. I'd be more than willing to be an errand runner in return for some useful insight!  

Fair question!
Easy answer is that it has changed over time and property by property. 
I would say initially we were slightly under after factoring everything in, but didn't take long to move to slightly over, and better and better.

I would say two of our largest learnings in REI were around the PM:
- Our PM is far better at mandatory rent increases and making tenants pay utilities etc, as where we were often afraid to ask (to say nothing for their knowledge of other rules, regulations, trends that we know nothing about)... so i would say at the end of the day our PM probably makes us money rather than costing us money.
- For us, this is a long term game and all about lifestyle. 
We certainly might be able to make more money by self managing, but we have been traveling full time (much of it internationally) for the past 10years and living out our dream lifestyles while our PM takes care of our portfolio back home.  |

Without the PM we would have likely sold the properties long ago to create more freedom/flexibility, as where with the help of the PM we've been able to not only keep our portfolio but grow it from afar!

At least in terms of our REI, hiring a PM was the best decision we ever made!!

Time to get a property manager! 
As much as it pained us early on to consider giving up profits by paying a property manager... it was the best business decision we made and it ensured that we didn't even have to have these conversations. 

Save your differences of opinions for things that matter to your relationship and let the experts raise rents when the timing is right! ;)