All Forum Posts by: Matthew Welk

Thank you everyone for the helpful replies! I'll take this and do some more research. Will post back with an update once we figure out our plan.

Does anyone have recommendations for an STR on-call service (not full property management), which will handle basic guest communication during their stay and handle organizing repairs (i.e. calling a plumber, HVAC, etc. ... not actually doing repairs themselves)? I have not been able to fund much about this on the forums. It's either self-manage, or full property management, while I need something in the middle.

Some more details on my situation:

I own an STR in Gulf Shores, AL and the vast majority of it is automated. Hospitable syncs calendars and automates guest messages (check in / out, etc.), Pricelabs sets the prices, ResortCleaning automatically notifies the cleaning team for turnovers. All that I do is answer guest messages, and call other people to repair things if needed. I would like to outsource this last task, so that I do not need to worry about always being available and within phone service. The work here is minimal, but it does require someone to be available 24/7.

Has anyone been able to successfully outsource this part of STR management? Would a virtual assistant be a good option?

I am looking to purchase my first rental property. I'm working with a max of $100k total (purchase + rehab). Ideally I would like to purchase a multi-family property. I live out of state, so all my knowledge about the area is from Google and BP posts. Looking at Zillow, it seems that it is possible to find Multi-family properties for as low as $60k (distressed) or $100k (not distressed); however, all these properties seem to be in the West Franklinton and Hilltop area. Doing some research on these locations reveals that they are some of the least desirable places in Columbus, with high crime and not many plans of expansion.

So my question to real estate agents, investors, and anyone else familiar with the area: Is it possible to find a property in Columbus in a decent area (C or above) that can be purchased and fixed up for under $100k? Or do I need to look for another location / adjust my strategy?

Thanks!

Thank you everyone for responding to my post! It's great to see how involved everyone at BP is.

@Heshel Mangel By "passively investing on larger deals", I assume you mean I would be more of a lender. Where I would lend some of my money on a larger deal where someone else was doing the majority of the work, and I would either get interest or a portion of the investment? Please elaborate if I am off base. I have not really thought about that route. The main reason being that I assumed people would want to work with someone with more experience, especially in a larger deal.

@John Barrett What areas in Washington would you recommend? Since I am interested in the BRRRR strategy, I would be paying all cash for the property. I'm working with around $80k for the property purchase and rehab costs. I didn't dig too deep into Washington, but it definitely seemed like a stretch. As far as time frame and desired income, my goal is to generate $50k per year in passive income within the next 5 years.

Hi everyone on BiggerPockets!

I am currently working as a Software Engineer in Seattle, but I can't picture myself grinding away in this career the rest of my life. I am looking for a way to generate passive income so in the future I can work less, but still have a livable income. I started reading about real estate investing a couple months ago, and I am determined to purchase my first property in 2020.

I am interested in the BRRRR strategy for a couple reasons. I like the fact that I do not need a loan up front, and will be able to close on a deal with cash fast once I find one. It decreases my initial risk because I don't owe anyone money if everything goes wrong. In the end, I would at least own a completely paid off house. BRRRRing will also get me into estimating and executing rehabs right out of the gate. Lastly, BRRRRing will allow me to recycle the same money over and over again, drastically increasing my ROI. This is assuming all goes well and I don't massively screw everything up...

I will be looking out of state because the prices in Seattle are too high. The top places I am looking at are Boise, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Grand Rapids. The initial numbers all look pretty good on these locations. They are have high employment and population growth, low vacancy rates, and low rent to income ratios.

Feel free to chime in on which location you would go for, or if you currently investing in any of them. My initial thoughts are to go with Boise. It has the strongest employment and population growth numbers, and the lowest vacancy rate. I also like that is in semi-reasonable driving distance (~8 hrs) from Seattle, so I could get down there for a long weekend to scope out properties. The weather in the midwest locations scares me a little bit. Dealing with snow and very cold temperatures seems like more overhead that I could avoid with a different location. Maybe I am overthinking it though.

Glad to be here! I hope to talk to many of you

 - Matt

I am in the process of choosing my first real estate investment location. I am interested in the BRRRR strategy. I know the data points that I want to gather, but I am having a hard time finding the actual data. I've been looking on sites such as city-data.com and bls.gov, but the amount of data that they have is overwhelming. A lot of the data on city-data.com seemed to be rather old (2016). Some metrics (e.g. employment growth rate), I have easily found that metric for recent months, but have struggled to find that same metric as an average over multiple years.

I assume experienced investors have specific sites and spreadsheets bookmarked so that they can easily gather all the data they need when they are evaluating a new location. I'd love to hear what online tools you all use in order to analyze a new location. Below are the specific data points that I am interested in.

- Employment growth rate
- Population growth rate
- Home appreciate rate
- Vacancy rate
- Foreclosures