All Forum Posts by: Michael Heisterkamp

The best salesman is silence.  If it doesn't work for you, than walk.  If the seller is really motivated they will reassess their counter offer.  If not than it's not the deal for you.   I have made far more progress in my negations by simply not taking the haggle bait.   I offer what I want to offer and leave the rest of it up to the seller.  If the seller counters back I simply say I have offered my highest offer and if that doesn't work for them they can re-list.  I live and die by my spreadsheet analysis. 

If you plan on doing this.

1) Charge an additional 2 days rent.

2) Charge a service fee.

3) Make sure you amend the lease.

4) Call their previous land lord to find out if they are skipping out on any rent.

I am using Colonial National Mortgage. I am good friends with my mortgage broker, which made jumping through technical hoops much easier. The mortgage industry is as much of a relationship business as it is a money industry.

From what I have witnessed a lot of the buy and hold investments going on in SoCal were plays made years and years ago, bought during the recent market depression, or are what I call a loss hold investment. Where you rent out a property and while you are holding negative cash flow the value of the property is rising significantly faster than your losses. You hold onto a house for 12 to 24 months and sell at a higher value than what you have in the property including the negative cash flows during the holding period.

Different strokes for different folks (and areas)

For everyone talking about conversion rates. I've traded currency for years. There is no difference in the bid:ask spread no matter how much you exchange of two currency types. There is often an exchange fee of 10 to 25 dollars depending on the bank for business transactions. That fee is immaterial when you look at a business transaction as a whole. If you are doing a direct ACH or Wire payment via an international bank you might be able to forgo the exchange fee if you do enough business on a yearly basis. However if you are selling property to foreign parties you won't qualify for that. Also you better look at doing transactions in Bitcoin not to save the transfer fee and exchange fee but because that will soon be the only way for Americans do but properties outside of the USA. The major banks are putting monthly limits on outflows of USA capital to foreign accounts. Currently JPMorgan is the only bank to have done so but and limits transactions to $50,000 a month unless express business is allowed by the bank (aka it wont be allowed) the USA is in a currency valuation crisis and the banks are looking to lock up capital to weather the storm.

Long story short anyone who dismisses Bitcoin and other similar currencies you are likely to be the ones holding the candle burning from both ends.

Real estate is no different. If tomorrow every person decided that California was a terrible place to live and everyone moved out the real estate would hold zero value. Nothing will always hold it's value forever. I can sell a hard drive with 10 million dollars worth of bitcoin for 10 million dollars. I think your view of bitcoin is typical. But in reality nothing is truly tangible because it is only worth what someone will pay for it.

The advice in the book is highly based on region. Would you consider not putting in AC in Arizona or heat in Boston?

I would be hesitant to do this unless you know what you are doing. Unless you know for fact that it is solid precious metals. Cheap jewelry is often just clad in precious metals rather than cast in it. So just make sure you know what you are doing.

The Chinese Government can outlaw bitcoin however they cant really stop people from using it. Given that it is a P2P currency the best the government can hope for is trying to catch the people after the fact. Even that is almost impossible to do because all the people have to say is we were transferring coins. Nothing was actually bought or sold.

Bitcoin derives it's value based on market forces rather than a government and federal reserve. There will only be a certain number of bitcoin that will ever be in existence. Unlike government backed currency which essentially has zero limits on the quantity in the market. This creates a supply and demand driven value. It's no different that real estate.