All Forum Posts by: Bryan L.

@Wane Tango There is some useful info there.  But you have to be careful with it.

Steve and Shaun are the real deal. These guys have been very successful as investors - so successful that their successful businesses messed up their lives. Their new focus on Lifeonaire (a play on the word millionaire, except that a Lifeonaire is full of life instead of being full of money) came out of there success. While they still teach and coach the nuts-and-bolts of REI, they also teach and coach about "life".

Well, it depends on which house you consider to be my first. I consider it to be the one that I am still living in 12 years later. We started accidentally. My wife and I were looking for a house to live in. We knew nothing about REI and weren't necessarily looking for a deal. Anyway, we found an REO in the right neighborhood, made an offer, and got it. It needed a good rehab, but nothing major (carpet, paint, hardwood, appliances, wall-paper removal, etc). We bought the house with a regular bank loan just like 99% of the population, and we then rehabbed it with our cash savings (didn't even know the term "rehab" at the time). So, we had equity due to being able to buy it at a bit of a discount and due to doing the rehab (and due to the down-payment that we put on it). We did most of the work ourselves on this, but did hire a couple of painters to finish up when I needed to go back to work (and we also hired flooring installers). Next, we went to a different bank and got a HELOC on the equity of this house that we bought to live in. Next, I used the HELOC to buy and fund the rehab on my first rehab-and-flip (so, maybe one might consider this rehab-and-flip to be my "first"). I hired out most of the work on this one. Only made about $4000 - $5000 on that first flip, but I was hooked. I've bought and rehabbed about 30 properties total since then.

The "disclosure thing" is real easy to comply with. Really not a problem. I don't see any potential "conflicts of interest" either with my broker. If I'm buying something that is a FSBO, that's totally separate from the brokerage. And legally, I have every right in the world to sell any of my properties "by owner" (with the disclosures) and not list it with the brokerage. My broker might not like it, but I could do it. But I chose not too anyway because I know the value of listing it. There's really no down-side to being a Realtor. Yes, there are some costs, but those can easily be repaid by just listing one or two houses a year (think friends and family - pretty easy).

In some areas of the country, they say that they "open escrow" when they have a binding purchase and sell agreement (contract).  In TN, we say that the deal is "under contract", or that we "have a binding contract".

I heard of a PM who tracks the maintenance costs at each property every year.  If a property has tenants who turn in maintenance requests that are higher than normal, then that tenant will get a little higher than normal rent increase at the end of the year.  I guess some of them will leave instead of paying the rent increase, but that may be a good thing.

I have had some who get caught up when their income tax refund comes in - usually around Feb or March.  Actually, I have two that are behind right now and I expect them to catch up with income tax refund money (they are behind, but are paying).

But, on the other hand, it seems that many people have one of those life events that the OP mentioned.  And it usually seems to me that these people will rarely get caught up in a reasonable amount of time.  Working with them just seems to drag it out.

@Payam Dastmalchi - This specific change that I mentioned is specific to my local MLS only (it's local/regional and covers maybe 10 counties in TN). However, there are many other local associations and MLSes (and brokers) who are considering (or have already) stopped sending out their listing data to Zillow, Trulia, and others.

You need to be very careful relying on these other websites anyway, since their information is often inaccurate, out-dated, or both.  That's part of the reason that many brokers and MLSes are no longer sending them the data.

Just a heads-up.  There was some discussion about this a few months ago.  At that time, I made the comment that some local Realtor associations and some individual brokerage firms were ceasing to send their listing data to Zillow, Trulia, and others (for several reasons).  Now today, I received an email from my local association/mls stating that all of the listings in our local mls would no longer be automatically syndicated out.  Each and every individual broker would have to contact the syndication company and make arrangements for their listings to be syndicated out (if they wish for this to continue).  However, all of our listings will still automatically go out to Realtor.com.

If you ever spent any significant amount of time at all working in "corporate-world" (a.k.a. cubicle-world), you wouldn't even have to ask the question.