All Forum Posts by: Ronald Allen Barney

One agent will usually have an MLS membership for an entire metro area or region of the state. Some are signed up for all MLSes in their state. Just about all of us have connections to loan brokers, yes.

About 1/3 of the agents out there are what I would call "investment literate", and within any given realty there should be one that will at least know what to look for, for investment deals.  If you contact a realty and the agent they pass you to is investment illiterate, move on to the next.

Incentive for a buyer's agent to get a lower price is repeat business and referrals.  A lower price isn't always possible anyway in this market, in spite of best efforts, such as when owner-occupier buyers offer way high due to emotional attachment.

Larger realties usually have Transaction Coordinators as in-house independent contractors who do good work and can usually take on outside work as well.  Try stopping by a few and see if you can collect TC business cards.

At a bigger brokerage all you really get is bigger institutional pressure to "go out and generate leads".  I don't have the contact network a brokerage typically expects an agent to have coming into the business, so my plan is to get a day job, save up some money for advertising, and then rather than personally deal with the leads that come in through the advertising, will refer all of them out and just collect referral fees.

It will probably be helpful if you identify where you will be investing.  Agents that aren't in that area will be eager to refer you to agents that are.

MFH advantages:  1)  Cost per unit will tend to be lower.  2)  Can become a house hack if tenants move out or right from the start if you're lucky.  3)  Can be part of the 4-3-2-1 Lumberjack Landlord strategy.  

SFH advantages: 1) Good deals easier to find. In my market it's extremely difficult to find any MFH at all let alone one that's a good deal. 2) Deals tend to be easier to finance.

 Yes, then.  As a tax hedge you did good.  ;)

I keep hearing radio ads from some realtor who promises in the ad copy that if they don't get an offer within 48 hours he'll buy it himself.  Pretty sure he's got investors lined up and is one (or a wholesaler) himself.

The primary driver of how much cash you'll need is how the home appraises versus the asking price (or current highest offer + $1k).  If the house appraises low you will need more cash.  If it appraises high you will need less cash.

A quick and dirty appraisal technique is to have your buyer agent do an "appraisal CMA" which starts like a regular CMA but only takes into account properties sold in the past 6 months (which is how appraisers do it). Their MLS will have a CMA tool they can adjust for the 6 month time limit and get you in the ball park for where it should appraise.

If there is higher appraisal value relative to asking price, that gives you wiggle room to offer a seller a credit at closing for them to do repairs.  

An easy example is, take a $300k house that appraises for $300k. Conventional LTV is 95% so 95% of the $300k appraisal value is $285k. Figure about 6% closing costs or $18k. If the $300k house is turn-key you would need $33k cash at closing on a conventional owner-occupier loan. If the home needs repairs and the seller won't budge on doing them at their own cost, in this case you can't roll it into the mortgage because it taps out at $285k, however, home repairs can also be done on credit, DIY, etc., so there are still some creative solutions for that.

I just try to get to know them as well as I can and sometimes different red flags pop out, not necessarily faults on their part, but for example one lady said she had $100k in cash want wanted to do a cash deal in her home town for $80k or less (to leave $20k for rehab). Five minutes into the MLS I found 2 properties in her price range and when she hemmed and hawed at those not being good enough I just put her on an MLS drip, gave her my card, and let her float off into space lol.

Sellers are worth more effort up front because they take less effort in contract-to-close and you get some free marketing with the for sale sign.  That's more of a process of trying every possible way to make things work.