All Forum Posts by: Matt Ridenour

Hello everyone!  
i have a very motivated seller with a lot of deferred maintenance. 
He isn’t savvy in real estate and I want to make sure I treat him very fairly. 
He owes 130k. My rehab estimate is 200k with an ARV of 575-600k (probably more but being safe)

He would like 300k. I know I can’t give him that. He is open to sub to, and he even would let me pay rent for him somewhere else in town.  
I’m trying to secure the property for as little as possible without screwing him over. 
my current best thought is a sub to, a year’s rent and a profit share once it’s sold. Maybe some walking cash. 
Any big ideas?

I’d love to hop on a call with a big thinker if you’ve got time!  Can’t give my cell I don’t think, but message and I’ll get right to you. 
I owe him an offer tomorrow morning. 😱

Quote from @Max Emory:

Hey @Matt Ridenour, I'll speak to the specific task of bookkeeping.

If you're going to consider having your VA take over bookkeeping tasks, ensure they're a trained bookkeeper, have experience with REI, or you have the time and skillset to teach them proper accounting practices.

I've seen having general VAs conduct bookkeeping go poorly more than I've seen it work.

Bookkeeping for REI companies is super nuanced and more complicated than other businesses so that adds to this situation.

Just my 2 cents. Glad it's going well for you guys so far and your business is becoming better as a result!

 That's more valuable than 2 cents Max, don't sell yourself short!  :-)

Thanks for the input.  I definitely can see that we will need to work through that part, or diversify.  So far she's working on general budgeting spreadsheets and order lists.  We have an in person bookkeeper that is managing the day to day receipts.  I'd love to hand that off to a virtual, but I feel like that in itself is almost a full time job at this point.  

Appreciate the value.  Have a great day!

Well that's too bad.  My post was deleted by the moderators because tomorrow night's zoom meeting was supposed to be in the events page, but.... you have to be a BP pro member to post there.  Sorry guys, based on the forum rules I didn't realize I was doing something wrong. 

Quote from @Ryan Irwin:

Quote from @Matt Ridenour:

 Much like @Chris Seveney said, mine helps me manage all of my businesses. Sounds like you're off to a great start. Mine does the things Chris mentioned, plus she helps me with booking travel, doing property research, book appointments, manage my calendar. I have another VA that does my bookkeeping as well. One thing that has been helpful is we have a weekly "sync" meeting on Monday mornings to review items from the prior week, along with for the upcoming week, communicate priorities, responsibilities, projects and priorities. Often times on these sync meetings, ideas come up and it becomes a collaboration on how my VA can assist or gives me an idea I hadn't thought of before. Then throughout the week, we both refer back to the sync notes.

 That weekly meeting is a good way to get the team in the same head space.  Do your VAs come from the same company/time zone?  I can see how 1 could grow into 2 pretty easily at even a little more scale.  

Quote from @Chris Seveney:

Quote from @Matt Ridenour:

Hi everyone.

We just hired our first virtual assistant and I have to say it's going great.  First of all it has forced us to systemetize our business, which was quite a process.  (And is still ongoing.)

My wife and I run our small portfolio of STRs and we flip 3-5 properties per year, doing much of our own contracting work.  Our virtual assistant was hired through Scale Virtually, whom we met up with at BPCon down in Cancun.  She is slowly taking over administrative tasks such as calendar and email management, contractor coordination, product research for flips, and many other things I'm not thinking of.  She's only been with us for a couple of weeks and I've been really happy with her skill set.  

What I am asking for is ideas for how to use her time as wisely as possible.  For those of you with virtuals, would you be willing to share some of the non-obvious ways they help you get through your work?  I'd like to build a list of things she can do when she has completed her daily tasks.

Thanks as always for your thoughtful responses!

 I would give it a bit longer than a few weeks - but we continue to have ours increase their responsibility - they manage our social media accounts, assist with putting documents in docusign/digital signature, they prepare spreadsheets for us to acquire assets, create presentations. We have a standard tasks each day that must be done then for filler work we have lots of other tasks for them from research, to marketing to data entry. 

Thanks Chris much appreciated. She's definitely getting better and better. Socials is a good growth area. We have her working on best practices for our STR marketing as a filler as well as some prop stream list mining.

Quote from @Ryan Irwin:

Quote from @Matt Ridenour:

 Much like @Chris Seveney said, mine helps me manage all of my businesses. Sounds like you're off to a great start. Mine does the things Chris mentioned, plus she helps me with booking travel, doing property research, book appointments, manage my calendar. I have another VA that does my bookkeeping as well. One thing that has been helpful is we have a weekly "sync" meeting on Monday mornings to review items from the prior week, along with for the upcoming week, communicate priorities, responsibilities, projects and priorities. Often times on these sync meetings, ideas come up and it becomes a collaboration on how my VA can assist or gives me an idea I hadn't thought of before. Then throughout the week, we both refer back to the sync notes.

 Excellent thoughts thank you so much!

Hi everyone.

We just hired our first virtual assistant and I have to say it's going great.  First of all it has forced us to systemetize our business, which was quite a process.  (And is still ongoing.)

My wife and I run our small portfolio of STRs and we flip 3-5 properties per year, doing much of our own contracting work.  Our virtual assistant was hired through Scale Virtually, whom we met up with at BPCon down in Cancun.  She is slowly taking over administrative tasks such as calendar and email management, contractor coordination, product research for flips, and many other things I'm not thinking of.  She's only been with us for a couple of weeks and I've been really happy with her skill set.  

What I am asking for is ideas for how to use her time as wisely as possible.  For those of you with virtuals, would you be willing to share some of the non-obvious ways they help you get through your work?  I'd like to build a list of things she can do when she has completed her daily tasks.

Thanks as always for your thoughtful responses!

Quote from @Ben Fernandez:

Oh lol...so you know! "Lankisster..."

 Naild it. ;-)

Quote from @Ben Fernandez:

Gotcha...I like your goals utilizing the lease option. The connection to the other business ventures is interesting. Even if you don't find someone able to chime in on that niche, you sound creative enough to make it a success. Keep up the good work.

 Thanks Ben.  Good luck over in Lancaster.  (I pronounced it right in my head, just fyi) ;-)

Quote from @Ben Fernandez:

You need to get licensed. These would be simple referrals.

Otherwise, wholesale them for a flat fee. Either the owner can pay or the buyer. However you structure it. You could also sell the lead to another company/person. There's plenty of people ready to pay for hot leads.

If those aren't options, and you are focused on owning them, seller financing, subject-to, and lease options are the only remaining options.

Thanks Ben.  Not interested in getting licensed.  Not my jam.  Also not interested in wholesaling.  I wouldn't feel good about convincing someone elderly to sell to me and then turn around and wholesale it.  Nothing against wholesaling, I purchase those houses all the time.  I just don't want to sit with an elderly person or their kids and explain my position in that deal.  I would rather just refer them to a friend in my network for free.
Seller financing works well with someone who wants cash flow for a longer period of time than I am working in. (I shoot for 3 month max on flips) Most of my people don't have a mortgage, so subto isn't a thing for them. That leaves lease option, or what I think is a more solid way to do it - lease purchase.  

I think there is a creative way to build an income bearing fund that would slowly drip towards living expenses in senior housing or assisted living.  I'm just hoping not to reinvent the wheel.