All Forum Posts by: Mike Cleveland

Greetings, does anyone else have anything to say regarding Epic Real Estate? My wife and I had an excellent conversation with Mercedes today and are considering investing in turnkey rental homes with them.

Any information would be welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you @Ted DeVitto, that makes sense, and yes that's why I posted, hoping to get others opinions and thoughts too.

Hi @Ted DeVitto, sorry if I didn't explain myself very well; we are going to purchase Crowdstreet offerings and/or other notes, debt, etc. with the funds. Not houses.

Greetings,

I'm wondering if we should start a LLC or some other type of business to do the following?

We are currently debt free but are wanting to take out a mortgage on the home we own, we are going to purchase Crowdstreet offerings and/or other notes, debt, etc. with the funds. In essence, we would be paying 4.125% for the mortgage and making whatever the funds pay (10-12%). 

We plan on doing this a number of times to acquire numerous paying notes and funds.

But my question is, should we run this through a business of some kind? If so, which one (LLC, corp. etc.) and what would the benefits be?

Thank you.

Mike

Thank you Dave.

Greetings, 

My wife and I are coming up on a time of transition in our lives, from full time employment to investing in notes, funds, etc. 

We are looking for a financial advisor, fee only, who is familiar with using self-directed IRA, mortgage notes, crowd-funding and retirement. We are trying to mesh our investing with our retirement plan and just need to have someone who can look over the big picture and help guide us.

We have worked with 2 financial advisors so far and have been steered to whole life policies and investing in the market. We believe this is because they are not familiar with note investing, crowd-funded investments, commercial real estate investing, debt investing, etc. 

We need someone who is. And we'd love them to be in Sequim, Washington where we live, but anywhere in Seattle area would be fine. If not luck there we're willing to do this by phone, internet, etc. 

I hope I posted this in the correct place, and I hope to get some good recommendations here.

Thank you.

The only experience I've had with PPR is that they have not responded to my numerous attempts to contact them from their website, so I couldn't tell you anything about them other than they are most likely way understaffed. 

I'm very interested in this thread, because in my 401K I am completely limited to stocks and ETFs by those who administer our 401K. I literally cannot do anything toward my retirement in that 401K other than purchase stocks. I would love to use it to purchase notes or funds, but we're simply not allowed.

And a personal IRA seems unlikely since the max I can put in it is $6500.00/year. That doesn't help much.

So I'm stuck with buying notes in my retail account. I have, however, taken a loan out on my 401K and purchased notes with it, but the max I'm allowed to take in a loan is 50K.

Does anyone else have this problem? Is there any other way to get around this so as to use retirement funds to purchase notes in a retirement account? And trust me, our administrators refuse to listen to us as to why we should be able to invest in notes, believing the stock market (that lost 50% in 2008) is a much safer investment than real estate. No use trying to talk sense into them when they've come to forgone conclusions before including pesky things like facts!

I love how you're thinking and planning; that seems to be the first step to action. 

My only qualm with your plan is selling covered calls. This of course is greatly hyped all over the Internet, but there are 2 things wrong with it:

1. It filters out the best stocks and leaves you with the underperformers. In other words all the good stocks that are doing great will be called away and all the underperforming stocks will be left in your account. If they drop in price (depending on how far) you will not be able to sell calls on them since they would be called away under water.

2. Covered calls violate the most important rule of investing: cut your losses short and let your profits run. Selling calls on a stock cuts your profits short and lets your losses run. 

Personally speaking I sold calls for many years and proved to myself that it is a futile way of investing. In a bull run I lost out on many "shoot for the moon" stocks that would have greatly boosted my returns, opting for a paltry couple of dollars for selling the calls. In a bear market the very limited protection calls offer you is soon offset by the fact that you've filtered out all good stocks (as they were called away) and are left with underperforming stocks that are sinking.

I hope this is helpful. And I wish you the best with your plan. 

P.S. I personally would consider going with some of the crowd funding options which allow small investments, rather than putting $1,000.00 in the stock market.