All Forum Posts by: Michael Weis

Thanks @Bob Okenwa. This is very helpful. But what I still don't understand is, if you're out there contacting listing brokers on your own anyway, why would that buyer's agent want to work his butt off for you if he thinks you're just going to go make your own deals anyway?

This is a very interesting thread. I've been wondering a lot about this lately because David Greene makes a lot of noise about working with multiple agents in a given area and he's an agent himself. So I'm wondering why would he say that when every other agent responding to this thread says something else? 

A little background about me: I currently own a duplex and multifamily property and want to get deeper into investing. I am studying for my RE licensing exam in my area, but that is not where I plan to invest. We worked with a friend of a friend to find our multifamily property, and it took quite a while before we found anything that suited our investment goals, but find it we did and he worked hard. Now, we want to keep investing in this particular area, but it really isn't his geographic area of specialization. I know there are plenty of other more local agents who we could use, but he seemed a little put off by the suggestion that we might want to use someone else.

He's a good guy, he worked hard for us and he's willing to continue to work hard for us even though he doesn't really know our area that well. My tendency is to want to help him along by making sure he knows our goals give him a chance, but he's not a rock star. He's just a good guy who's willing to work hard. 

Who do you pick and why? And most important, why can't you use multiple agents, if there's no exclusivity anyway, and everyone knows what's going on? 

@Joe Norman My wife and I are in this together. We don't currently have any other partners.

Sorry for letting this thread die an untimely death. I've been dealing with some personal matters that have consumed a lot of my time.

@Joe S. I do not yet have a rehab team in place.

@Joshua Janus Thanks. I already have someone looking into it.

@Joe Norman so I'm guessing it would be fair to say that, aside from not knowing actual rehab costs or ARV at the outset, it's really up to me going in to decide my own comfort level with leaving money in a project like this. I've worked out the numbers a few different ways, and even with the worst-case scenario, adding the third unit to this property will enable pretty healthy cash flow, though it would be pretty iffy without it.

@Joshua Janus I've also noticed there is a distressed property right across the street from another one of my houses that has had fencing around it for a few years. Is that the sort of thing you're talking about? How would I find out about other kinds of distress aside from property distress. Disclaimer: I am studying right now for my NY real estate exam, but will primarily be investing in NJ. Why NY? Because that's where I live and spend most of my time.

I love the idea of the BRRRR strategy, but really wonder about whether or not it can work in higher-priced markets like the one I'm in. For instance, I found a pretty distressed duplex in my market that is currently on sale for about $100K less than its ARV. Given what I know it needs without even seeing it, though (new roof, fascia repairs, animal control, new boilers, lead and asbestos remediation, oil tank removal--and that's without knowing anything about it structurally or cosmetically on the inside), I'm guessing I would have to put in roughly $100k in rehab. But I would have to offer $100k less than the asking price to make it work as a BRRR under those circumstances. In particular, there is a large garage with a second story that I could use to create another unit, which I'm sure has not been figured into the ARV I've seen online. I guess what I'm really wondering is whether or not it even makes sense to try to BRRRR in my market, as making it work requires going so far below the asking price that I can't imagine why any seller would want to accept such an offer. I'd love to hear any feedback. BTW, we love this market because we've got a major university a few blocks away, Fortune 500 employers in the area and other factors which drive constant rental demand. We've never had a problem finding great tenants and we want to find a way to continue investing there.