All Forum Posts by: Will Wu

Being frugal is definitely a way of life no matter how much money you make or if you have a huge net worth. I started from zero properties to owning 50+ properties in one year. I have used my savings to purchase some properties and with the profits I made I invested into new properties. I used to drive big fancy cars and living in huge houses. I found that buying fancy car is the most stupid financial decision one can make. Not only it attracts a lot of unwanted attention (and problems). Fancy cars, clothes, bags, watches,  etc does not appreciate like real estate does. It starts to loose value the minute you drive off the dealership. Nowadays I drive my Honda Civic Hybrid and my wife drives a Scion. We are very happy with this lifestyle and no matter how much money I make I will keep living within our means. So I'll completely agree that if you don't have much capital to start with you must create the habit to not waste money and invest every cent you can. 

 Are you an absentee owner? If not then you should be able to manage the duplex by yourself. It could be easier than manage your property manager. I have 50 units and I do not want to use property management because I believe nobody will care more about your money and property than yourself. I will suggest you manage by yourself in the beginning and as you grow your portfolio you can hire people to work for you (maintenance and administration) I spend less than $2000 hiring a guy that does all the repairs, painting, notices serving, showings for my 50 units. The only thing I do it myself if to screen tenants, leases, evictions and collecting rent.  

 Thank you for your encouragement. A year ago I did not have any properties on my portfolio. After deciding to jump into being a landlord and after lot of hard work now I have a portfolio of 50 units apartments generating 6 digits cash flow per year. My secret weapon is to always take action immediately and be as effectively as possible. While others are still hesitant on a deal I already closed the deal. This current deal with this lady is a 50/50% in my opinion but I have already moved on to discuss others deals in case this one does not work. Sometimes loosing is winning. 

 That's a bit tricky. What happen when you sign the contract and you can't secure the money? I'll prefer to have the money then negotiate the deal. The worse that can happen is that the deal is down and the moneys back to the investors.

 I can barely reach her on the phone so I don't have the chance to even sit with her discuss anything. I just met her once, talked to her maybe 4 times on the phone. A couple of emails. I'm not crazy harassing her or being aggressive. Last contact I had was this morning when she returned my email saying her attorneys are still reviewing the contract and she will get back to me today (it's been 3 days that she is saying the same thing). I thanked her for the reply and told her to contact me if she needed any assistance. Without further surprise she did not got back to me again. Anyway I'm getting used to it I have to accept that some people do not really think they have to get back to you when they say they will. I already moved on to negotiate another deal. Time is money and I will not worry about her anymore. 

 Yes I could do that. But considering she has a lot going on and what she asked is a fair market appraisal price I did not see the need to ask for discount. I'm all about establishing win-win deals. I don't like to play games I'm always honest and upfront sometimes I might get screwed by being too honest but most of the times I found that is the best way to do business. 

Thanks for your comments. Just so you know I do have experience managing 50 units by myself and I know exactly what she is going thru. She has a crew of 4 people that is helping her managing all the properties. Her properties are just couple of blocks from mine and I know what are the challenges and rental going on. What you said about google all tenants that in my opinion is just nuts. Seriously? Checking liens and lawsuits will be part of the title company due diligence anyway.  Im not going to spend money doing lien search on 20 properties without even having a contract signed. That would not make sense at all. This is not about Me or Her or being Male or Woman or Black or White with kids or without kids as I saw many people discussing it. It does not matter for me what gender or race you are. This is a business transaction. She is in need of cash because she told me she had to sold dirt cheap one duplex just to get money to fix her roof. My Help to her is to offer her full asking price to buy the properties so she can take the cash and do whatever she needed to do. She sent me a list of the properties and we I had to go over all properties county records to check each properties and get the appraisal price. I then submitted her the report so she could have a clear picture of the values of her properties. Am I not helping her? I'm not a wholesaler. I don't do this everyday. Yes! I'm the problem and my problem was taking her word too seriously and move too fast without realizing that she might not be ready to do the deal yet. Most sellers will love to have a buyer that offers full asking cash and it's proactive to close IMO. 

 I agree with you completely. We take the time to write on this forum because we are looking forward to learn from others but there is no need to be called names. Everyone can freely express their opinion without the need to insult others. For some reason this universe works in a way that amazes me I just got a call out of nowhere from a realtor offering me another great deal that fits exactly my 7 figure budget. 

 I completely agree with you. Nowadays is really easy to be a realtor and I've seem to many realtors that do not have any negotiation skills. I got much better results dealing directly with the seller or seller agent. The more people involved the more room for misunderstanding and sometimes conflict of interest that might not be your interest at all. Unless you have a realtor that you trust completely I will not want to use a realtor to negotiate for me especially when I can do it directly and sometimes have more room for discount as some seller realtors they are less greedy and are willing to cut their commission to 3% to make the deal happen. 

 I don't even want her to close on a deal that she does not feel 100% good about it. I want a win-win deal. That is why I let her setup her price and we did not even countered. No matter how busy a person can be, if you have engaged someone into negotiation you must expect them to follow up with you. Not answering calls and not giving any feedback after confirming you have a deal is not what I will do to anyone at all. If I don't have any interest I will flat out tell them I'm not interested anymore. It happened to me one time when I got a realtor send me a contract and I found a better deal. I immediately sent her an email telling her I won't do the deal anymore because I got a better deal and apologized for wasting her time. I took me only 2 minutes of my time and the realtor never called me again and that allowed her to move on without guessing what happened.