All Forum Posts by: Ronald Allen Barney

I did realestateexpress dot com.  Passed the exam first try.

Awesome heads up, thanks!

Evaluate what cash you would get from a refi against the cash position you would need for any deals that you find.  Include closing costs and a bit of a bid war fund as appropriate for the deals.

@Jerry Puckett hope you don't mind me sharing the info you messaged me but I think it's of value to the original poster. A "do it right" direct mail campaign for RE agents takes an investment of about $7k but testimonials have stated a net profit increase of $50k based on that investment, which is good ROI. Doing it right is a repeated mailing campaign over a period of months and that frigging dinosaur that advocated "golden letters" in my market center, his name is mud to me now. Anyway when I get that level of capital built up (probably via a day job) I plan to try DM the right way. I do like mass marketing--when it works. More scalable than door-pounding, calling "friends", and writer's cramp.

Yeah DG is the canary in the coal mine and he ain't left yet hehe.

Lease break fees are usually $2k.  Is that not part of your lease?

Even though zoning regulations are minimal, it's still worthwhile to double check that as part of your due diligence.  Other than that the lot rentals should be pretty straightforward.

 Max of $2k cash out from the house equity over and above the student loan principle to be paid off.  In other words it can't be a combination student loan and cash-out refi.

For idea 1, one of the more in-demand areas of help emerging RE agents need is administrative assistants.  Someone who is organized, has good phone skills, and can take care of paperwork and scheduling.  As the agent's business grows that ground floor admin assistant typically rises in responsibility to become leader of an administrative team.  Some agents are dinosaurs and try to list their admin jobs in the local newspaper (lol).  Check those as well as online job sites, and check around the various realties in your area to see if any agents are looking for administrative help.  Sometimes they don't even know they need the help until the help comes a-knockin'.

I would add a con for idea 2:  being an agent requires significantly more startup capital than the typical college student has available.  It is, after all, a business, and as with all businesses there are investments to make.  I will confess that I grossly underestimated the capital I would need to start up, myself.  I brought about $10k to the game and to be able to effectively market for business I should have brought at least $25k.  Now my war chest is on vapors and I only have the "free" options for marketing now, and brokerages in my case say "just call people you know".  Yeah.  I'll get right on that.

If you are handy, an extremely in-demand field right now is construction contractors.  You could join a GC's team starting as a laborer (crap work at first like job site cleanup, managing people's tools, etc.) and will be given more skilled tasks from time to time to see what you're good at.  If you prove yourself in a certain area, say carpentry for example, they might take you on as an apprentice in that or some other area.  Eventually you can become your own licensed contractor and start to really kill it in that field, and will have a boots on the ground perspective for rehab.  A friend of mine went this route, used to borrow money from me and now people are hitting him up to borrow from him (showing off his shiny new truck hehe).

I think it's the rental estimator tool here on BP.  Confidence level in this context is the confidence that the figure it gives you is an accurate median rent for the address you gave it (statistically).