All Forum Posts by: Max Abend

Hi Leslie, just send a connection request--a friend from a REIA might be interested either by himself or jointly with me. Would be interested to chat more in private.

Not really a flipping question, but didn't know where else to post. FWIW, I bought this house from a flipper 😋

Long story short, despite paying $900 service for emergency AC service on Sunday, I arrived home from work last night to no AC. Assuming I need a new condenser, what is a reasonable price for a 2.5T or 3T unit installed in Nassau county NY (near JFK, so not that close to Manhattan, but not that far). I'm hoping to leverage the prior $900 to get a much better price on the labor portion, but I know we have one if the pricier servicers since they're one if the only ones that advertise regularly. They only sell Carrier and Daikin, which are fancier than the currently installed Goodman unit.

Is there any real savings to be had by purchasing the unit directly from an HVAC or plumbing supply house?

@Frank Chin

Thanks Frank, this was exactly the kind of thing i was looking to learn. Would be curious if anyone else has experience with these sorts of scenarios. I. E. A duplex where a garage was converted to a third unit it something like that.

@Rahul Handa

Yes, the 4% rule is probabilistically determined to make your portfolio last for a 30 year retirement. In the vast majority of cases, your portfolio will last longer than that, or even increase over time. You spend down 4% in year one and then increase each year for inflation.

In real life, nobody draws down their portfolio this way. If you spend conservatively during a bear market, your portfolio will likely last longer. The best way to determine likely success is to retire when 10 year PE is on the average/low side. PE right now is kind of high, so you'd want to lower the SWR if you were retiring today.

All that said, the rule hasn't been tested for retirements longer than 30 to 40 years, so if you're planning on retiring earlier, you may want to consider a lower safe withdrawal rate.

designed to allow you to spend down your portfolio for a3

I approached a real estate company to learn more about how the owner started and to learn his experience with REI. He mentioned that the best opportunities in southeast Nassau county are buy and hold multifamilies, but that most are not fully legal. For instance, you might be buying a legal triplex that has four or five actual units.

How hard would it be to get such a property rezoned for the extra units in Nassau county (town of Hempstead)? That'd pretty much be the only way I'd consider one of those properties. For someone who did buy, but didn't rezone, what are the risks?

@Scott Wolf--Triplex in Hyde Park (or Poughkeepsie or something) doesn't sound terrible.  I used to live in a slumlord type of triplex in Danbury, CT while at undergrad and considered looking around there too (not as a slumlord, obviously).

@Chris Grenzig  Thanks for chiming in.  The Westbury meetup sounds like a great idea!  I'd seen it a few months ago by just Googling, but didn't realize it was a BP-member associated thing, so I'll definitely try and check it out.

TL/DR Version:  How do full-time employees in the greater NYC area invest (especially locally)?  Or if not local, how do you go about investing out of the area?

Hello BP!  I am a complete newbie living in Nassau County (Long Island) in New York, and I work in NYC.  I just wanted to introduce myself since I am in the networking and self-education phase of my RE journey.  

I come by way of a strong interest in personal finance.  I started listening to podcasts in that space about 1 to 1.5 years ago because I have always been interested in financial independence (not necessarily retire-early).  I was following the FIRE mantra of maxing out retirement accounts via passive index investing and have been investing additionally in a taxable brokerage account, but heard a podcast interviewing the founders of Roofstock and became intrigued.  I then found my way here to BP and started listening to the BP podcast.  I have also been through a few RE books.  I am convinced that real estate investing with an appropriate amount of leverage provides better risk-adjusted returns than simple equity index investing, so I'm getting ready to get to the next level.

Knowing my temperament and given my professional background and skills, I lean towards buy and hold, performing notes, non-performing notes, and tax liens/deeds.  I have a very good full-time job as an attorney at an alternative investment firm and plan to stay for the long-haul, unless I somehow become an RE-mogul, so wholesaling is definitely not for me (even though I think I could likely excel there).  But, flipping with the right partners might be.  I have access to some capital and a decent base of knowledge/sophistication, but there are just so many places to start and ways to go!  I figure I'll take it slow, but wanted to get my name out there.

Given the high taxes and high property values in and around NYC, I am very curious to see what strategies local investors use.  I can't imagine buy and hold works too well in Long Island or Queens, but I'd love to be proven wrong!  I can easily see flipping working here, but I'm not sure how I would even get started in that strategy (let alone if I could convince my family that it isn't the riskiest strategy ever!)  As of right now, I'm considering one or two houses on Roofstock or through Memphis Invest (pending more diligence on them), depending on available financing, and purchasing a few tax liens.  

I'm looking forward to connecting here on BP and launching this stage of my investing career!