All Forum Posts by: Nate Burgher

Great attitude @Dante Foreman, best of luck to you in your upcoming ventures!

Hey @Henry Hill, personally I don't think I would buy in a market with a realtor that isn't in that market. I need someone that is in the know of all the neighborhoods, local government policies, where the jobs are relative to properties, what kind of people would be buying / renting from me, etc. If I don't have a realtor that has knowledge of the area, then a darn well better have people in the area that have that kind of knowledge I just listed.

Just my two cents.

Hey @Brian Smith, I don't know of a book to recommend you, but when it comes to $2k, seems pretty unreasonable to me. The most I've ever been approached with was for a BNI networking group, which was about $800 for the first year and $450 every year after that. I still said no, I'd rather take people out to coffee on my own time and have genuine conversations. But that's just my two cents. 

Following in case someone else recommends a good book!

Hey @Robert Jones, welcome! 

No reason to be skeptical, you just need to be educated. Getting into your first property is 100% a numbers game. You have to know the market, the rents, the true values, and then do some math. There's tons of great spreadsheets available in the Tools > FilePlace section in the top menu system that can help you crunch some numbers. The BP Calculators are great too!

Since you don't have a large sum of money, you have to be creative with what you have. A lot of your creativity truly comes down to building a good network or people in the industry. I recommend reading Brandon Turners book on Investing with Little to No Money Down. It's a quick read (130-ish pages), but it does a nice breakdown of the multiple options you have. You'll find though that reading through those options, it comes down to a network.

Hopefully that helps you get started! Feel free to ask more questions, and I'm sure there will be a wealth of knowledge to be shared from other members on this amazing forum!

I like to use 10% personally, but I don't have near as much experience as others in this beautiful site. 10% Maintenance & Repairs, 10% CapEx.

Not sure if this will help, but maybe you can find the info on the county tax assessor site? If that doesn't work, might have to  / want to get a realtor involved, they can get the info for you.

@Pete M., have you talked to your realtor? Do they know the neighborhoods well? What about Trulia.com and their crime map? Does Trulia pull the information from Tacoma PD? What about calling Tacoma PD and asking about that area? 

Just some ideas. Sounds like the neighborhood is your big concern, so find a way to get your answers :)

Hey @Adam Read, welcome! 

I like to run my numbers through BP or through many of the nearly identical public spreadsheets you can find in the Tools > FilePlace section, all uploaded by fellow BP users. They all get you within +/- 2%. You'll never really know the numbers until you own your first property and have tenants in there, and even then, you still haven't been through all the headaches of bad tenants, capital expenditures (roofs, furnaces, etc.), repairs and all that stuff. 

Personally, when running my numbers I like to find my rents from Hotpads.com because I can look at pictures of other comp rentals in the area and compare quality. Vacancy I set between 5%-10%, depending on the area (assuming I know it), and then 10% each for repairs, capex and management. I do reduce maintenance, repairs and capex appropriately if the property is managed by an HOA that takes care of some or all of that stuff. Appreciation and growth (west coast) at 2%. Purchase costs at 4.5%, sales costs at 9%.

Those are just the numbers I like. By no means are they hard numbers that everyone should follow, just the way I like to run them. 

Hey @Noah Henderson, love the mindset and ambition! 

Your biggest hurdles will not be your age and inexperience. Both of those will grow with time, as long as you keep up the ambition and are willing to learn, which it sounds like you are!

The bigger hurdles will be finances, networking, and education. Right now you can control two of those (networking & education). By finding BP, you can build on both of those pretty easily, you just have to dedicate the time to do so. Finances are the tougher one, you either have to spend less or make more. Sounds like you're already setting aside $16k / year, which is huge at the age of 18, kudos to you! Keep that up. 

Keep an eye on your finances, learn about budgeting, credit cards, profit and loss statements, etc. Learn as much as you can about finances and how to manage them. Network with people that know a lot about it, take them out to coffee and pick their brains for an hour. Listen to podcasts. Read books. Learn different methods of thinking about money (Rich Dad, Poor Dad book).

When you're ready to jump into buying a place, I highly recommend a duplex, triplex or fourplex. Live in one, rent out the others. This will save you money on cost of living, ideally by having the other units pay for your living expenses. This means you can save more money, ultimately putting more money back into your investment goals.

Hopefully this helps! I'm sure you'll get a lot of others responding here with tons of other great ideas. Message me if you want to chat more!

Hi @Nate W.! Honestly, none of those sound like great deals to me, just by using the 1% rule of thumb which isn't always exact, but it helps find a quick yet rough answer. Your properties before the cost of HOA only get to about 0.7%, which means in the long run you'll fall about 30% short from what you need. I don't know anything about these counties, so maybe there's something there that I'm unaware of, such as lots of job and population growth.

As for property management, they're not just there to fix things. They find the tenants and do all the paperwork, take the phone calls from tenants, make the phone calls to contractors, etc. They don't just fix the physical issues. It's fine to not account for the cost of property management if you want to go that route, but keep in mind that you're simultaneously saying that any time you spend on this property (marketing, screening, repairs, etc.) is worth $0.00. Additionally, but not accounting for management costs right now, you're assuming you will want to be the PM for the entire length of ownership, and / or you're assuming you'll see appreciation that will increase the rents giving you the ability to step aside and pay a PM. Just something to come to terms with if you want to go that route.