All Forum Posts by: Nathan James

I grew up in Lincoln NE doing fix and flip then renting to college kids.

I quickly learned about how much turnover and repairs eat into all that rental income.

RE is about becoming wealthy over a long period of time and to do that you have to buy stable long term investments with the least amount of problems to deal with along the way.

I'd ask the title company that is closing the property if they have an expert or 1031 attorney they employ to refer questions to.

Your best bet is to get owner financing. Period. Figure out who they are, tell them your story and leave the banks out of it. You need the full picture from them first and foremost.

As many others have intimated there are multiple ways to skin a cat. I have an S Corp that pays myself a salary. We use that as proof of income even though I'm self employed. There are also fantastic tax benefits. I'd talk to a CPA first then shop lenders.

Get out of the mindset of simply 'real estate' and into 'real estate as a business'. From there if the numbers are in line and the risk is mitigated, real estate as a business historically is like no other.

Remember you have to pay to be with most if not all MLS associations... you're paying to breathe being a licensed agent. In my opinion it won't hurt as you'll gain valuable experience in multiple arenas however it's not a necessity. You can show up with a PQ in hand and that's maybe a plus to a seller where you they aren't paying a commission to anyone. It's all about the story, the presentation and level of preparedness to make a deal.

Did you ever close on this? Curious if you found something to work. Not all lenders are competent in every loan program out there and even if they can sometimes it's not in their model or advantageous to them to lend on it.

There are thousands of loan programs which constantly change in language and ability to acquire. You just have to fit in one box out of those thousands.

I would start calling around, tell the lender every, single detail of the story and if they can't do it, they may know someone that can.

When I call my lender I start out with, "This is what I'm trying to accomplish..." then tell the story.

Our brokerage is trying to get more trusted vendors to turn to for our clients. Typically once a week we'll have guest visit and make connections to learn about each other's services. If that's something you're game for give me a shout!

We work all across the metro as does our property management side.

Being an agent in KC and going out competing for properties for clients is pretty intense right now.

An important aspect about real estate that I think often gets overlooked is the story. We all need that and connecting to others is so important.

For example I was able to get into my personal home with an FHA 7 months ago in a desirable part of town because I found a FSBO and connected to the seller. Told him my family's story and the deal went from there. That simply wasn't going to happen if I was doing the same thing as traditional buyers. Didn't even need to be an agent to make that happen.

Very few people can compete with institutional investors buying to park money, even experienced ballers. Now more so than ever thinking outside the box in RE is important.

Maybe a hand written letter, knocking on some doors, targeted flyers etc. you'd be surprised what you get when you open up and ask.

I owned and self managed a restaurant for 10 years even though I had the chance to hire and manage out during. It was at that time that I realized in a brutal way the concept of opportunity cost.

Now I apply that to real estate. If you are stuck in the business you're not running the business as an owner, you're really a technician and employee of that business.

If you want to be an owner, great, learn to delegate. Letting go of that slice of control is hard but once you do it's quite freeing which is hard to put a price on in my opinion.