All Forum Posts by: Marina Wong

Hi Michael, 

It is a difficult thing for people to transition into real estate while holding a full-time job. I was lucky that I got laid off after 9/11 and so can transition into real estate with my unemployment pay supporting me. Of course it helps to have a spouse working full-time as well.

I now invest in multiple things in real estate and have four different kinds of passive income streams related to real estate ( well being a landlord is not as passive as most people think but tax wise is still considered a passive income unless you elect to be a real estate professional, which could have other not so good tax consequence).

 It’s getting very difficult to find good deals in Massachusetts within 30 minutes from me. In fact New Hampshire could be a better place for you . I am thinking of looking into New Hampshire‘s market as well.  I am meeting with an investor who is doing opportunity zone investment in Manchester today. That’s one of the area you can look into if you had a lot of gain from stock market in the past couple years. Feel free to PM me for any questions.

However, I do agree with Sean that you could house hack a multi family in Massachusetts that’s closer to work.  Once you save in commute time, you can use that time to look for more deals. Lowell and Dracut  Area should have something that will work for you number wise. 

 One size does not fit all.  Other peoples investment strategies may or may not fit your investment goal. The best really is to see what other people are doing and evaluate whether that’s a good choice for you. Besides, the strategy that works for you now may not be the best strategy that will work for you in 10 years. Biggerpockets is definitely the place to learn.

@Stefan Shirley Some companies are stricter than others when it comes to the verification process of your accredited investor status. Some of them just require you to check off the appropriate boxes, some of them wants to see more (like tax return etc).

In regards to SDIRA, I currently have one and the paperwork is a mess. I need to look for another one and so I restart my search process. In general, the sales teams are good and very knowledgeable. Problem is with the staff who do the day to day work. There are reviews on yelp and I in general do not take any negative comment on fee into consideration. People should have looked at the websites more in detail because the fees people complain about are common fees. Even getting the fee wrong is not too big a problem in my opinion. Not that I have money to burn, but just that it is something that can be easily corrected. The kind of mistake I have problem with is paper work not get processed on time (when one property was sold, the discharge paper, along with the officer's original signature paperwork did not get to the closing attorney until almost one month after closing, after multiple requests. Had the closing relied on our discharge paperwork, we would have stalled the closing). Also make sure you can secure  upload paperwork and not have to email or fax.

Also I would say in general avoid buying a property with your SDIRA (I loan money to flippers with my SDIRA or do syndication deals). If you buy properties with it, your tenant will need to pay rent to the SDIRA and SDIRA will need to pay tax on your behalf and I saw some horror stories in yelp's review on that.

@Account Closed connect with Dan Handford or look into multifamilyinvestornation.com. There is a webinar tonight (Sunday night) at 9 PM EST on the topic of raising money. 

I would never advise any of my buyers to buy anything in the flood zone. Unless of course if they don’t care about potentially losing their hard earn money.

Is this a monthly meet up?

@Account Closed

1) I would strongly recommend Multifamily Investor Nation Forum. I learned a lot from it and still watching videos. You will also find the players in multifamily and see if you can team up with them. I signed up to learn more as both an investor and possibly help raising fund in the future.

2) Also want to share with you my personal journey and what I discovered: I am a Realtor in MA so I have investor clients. From the investor client, I can feed them deals about local Joint ventures. From the local joint ventures, I can gauge their interest in possible out of state syndication deals. After talking to several friends/clients, I find out that there are 2 types of investors: investors who have money but not interested in owning real estate unless it's their own properties, investors who are ok to be passive investors. Of those who can be passive investors, they want A LOT of validation/verification before they are willing to consider putting money in a deal. I will need to run all sorts of analysis on spreadsheet to give them the what-if scenario run down. Most investors want to see numbers instead of pretty marketing material. At least the ones I know. I have talked a little with these investors about out of state syndication but I am now concentrating on getting them comfortable in investing locally. I also need to make sure the risk factors are taken care of for my investors. So definitely run all the numbers, doing sensitivity analysis and also cover all the risk factors (in a syndication deal, the syndicator or his/her partner should have track record so it's more the track record that people are looking at. In a local JV with a builder, we need to cover more what-if scenarios/risk factors.) In general, you need to speak their language and know what it feels like being an investor. If I don't invest with my investors, I don't think anyone will invest in those deals.

3) As other people pointed out $100k is too much to ask. I have been looking at syndication deals for 2 years now. I just cannot put myself in any deals that ask for that much even though I have heard of/followed these people's track record for longer than that. Most ask for $50k and for return investors even less.

4) Also need to educate yourself regarding any peripheral needs of an investor. For example, if they want to invest with their IRA, what custodian would you advise? How does your return compared to that of stock market etc. Maybe if they sell their current real estate holding that they can join you. Well they might ask about 1031. Can you recommend someone to do 1031 and would you be able to do 1031 when you sell your apartment building? Should I invest with IRA or Roth IRA or convert IRA to Roth... Maybe you need a CPA to answer that kind of question. Again, need to look at a lot of things from the investor's point of view and you will understand why or why not they want to invest with you. And very often, they might not be the one asking. You need to know more than them. When you do, you will know what to put out in your Youtube videos or blogs.

5) Even after being in real estate for over 15 years and wore many hats (appraisal, investing, sales ...) I still have a lot to learn. I don't think I would ever finish learning (and that's what I love). I found answers to many of my questions hear at BP. At least you are in the right place and you have done a very difficult job of getting a deal. Don't give up or get discouraged. There are many good people here to help. Listen to as many podcast as you can (if you have not been doing that already), in  your car, while you cook etc. 

Also read this https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/colossal-...  by Brian Burke. Actually if you google "fail" in BP, you will find many valuable posts here on this subject. It's good to learn from other people's failure.

@Mark Terry I JV with other people for flips. I know we will consider as south as Quincy. If you have anything in Quincy or north of that, please PM me.

I agree with Carl that speed and customer service are important. You also want to make sure you can upload important documents so you don't need to email sensitive information. I have been using the Entrust Group but not really thrilled with their customer service. Looking into New Direction. The sales rep is very knowledgeable and we have a good rapport but I just saw some very negative review on Yelp. That's why I am looking to see if there is any other recommendation on BP and run into this thread. I know many PPRNotes customers use Camaplan. Udirect was recommended by someone else in BP and I just watched a talk given by Kaaren with Udirect. She seems to be very knowledgeable. But she probably is not the day to day rep that you talk to. Other people also mentioned Sense Financial and Quest IRA.

Also make sure the company can hold the kind of asset you are interested in investing. Quest doesn't allow precious metal, for example.

@Dave Van Horn I have looked into PPR note a few years back when PPR was offering 12% return. Now I think it's only 10%. It seems from another thread that this is due to the fact that the fund is investing in 1st position vs previously 2nd position. Is this the only reason? I am comparing your product with some annuity product that I am looking into. I don't really like the return of an annuity product but I think that's basically no risk. I know you have a good track record and I know someone in my area who personally knows you. So I feel comfortable with that. But how can I educate myself when I look at a note fund company and know that they are financially strong? After reading Brian Burke's post about his apartment syndication deal that went terribly wrong, I understand even very successful people can face some pretty challenging situation. If he did not have the funds to ride out those difficult years, his investors wouldn't see their money back. So are there reports that I can ask which can tell me the financial health of the company? Thank you.

@Brian Burke At my local REIA, one of the founders has a similar story. He was underwater but he had to do right by his investors. Now he is very successful. I agree that sharing stories like this probably earn you more investors than sharing only success stories. Sharing only the success stories, you earn people's respect for your knowledge. Sharing your failure, you earn people's respect for your character.

May I ask you whether that property is in a primary, secondary or tertiary market? Was it a class B or class C apartment building? Was it in an area with diversified economy? In retrospect, would it have made any difference if it were in a different market (primary instead of secondary, for example) or a better class apartment? Thank you.