All Forum Posts by: Ross Hewitt

Hi all,

I have looked at a couple medical office buildings near Kansas City. Most tenants from what I have seen have about 6-8 years left on their leases and I'm wondering what re-leasing the space is like, should they decide to leave. I know each location is different, but how long does it typically take to lease a space? We could hypothetically say maybe one is near a hospital, one is in a retail-type building, and one is standalone in a suburban setting. What advantages/disadvantages do these locations offer? Would this significantly impact returns come year 7 if tenants decide to leave? Would love to connect with a medical office leasing broker.

Thanks

@Seth Ferguson thank you for the response! That’s good to know.. so do you recommend focusing on building relationships to maybe form a partnership down the road and using what I save as skin in the game? 

And yes, I’ve heard it can take a while and am trying to be as realistic as possible with myself. Are you an agent?

Hello BP,

I am a college student who is working with my dad on both of ours first deal (I will post a detailed summary with pics once it is finished). I am wanting to either start investing while in college or try to save as much money and meet as many people as possible to get after it when I’m done with school. I have 2 years left of school. I’m going to be an agent in the next few weeks. My idea now is to become an agent while in college and get some sales, while also learning from helping my dad and another investor I’ve met to be prepared for my own investments. If an owner financed deal comes along then I’ll have enough for a down payment, but if I end up not buying a single property while in college I’d have money saved up and 2 years of 1099 income to show. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I show fairly consistent 1099 income for 2 years and have good credit, I should be able to get a loan. This would set me up well for my first investment.

Please criticize my thoughts or give me advice! I’m open to any and all ideas, but I just wanted to share my current plan and see what people had to say.

Thank you!

Originally posted by @John Moore:

I’ve spent a lot of time reading lately. I’m familiar with the 50% rule and the 70% rules of thumb. I’m looking for both a property to flip and a property for cash flow. I feel more confident in buying a rental property than I do a flip but I’d love to have the income this year from a flip. So I’m looking for both. 

After looking at a listing online, how do I know if that property is worth further investigation or not? I mean most people aren't going to list their properties at 70% of market value on any website and even if they did I wouldn't know it because I don't know what the market value is of their property. Plus I can't tell by a listing how motivated a seller is to sell at a lower price. Am I just going to get comps on every single property and then put offers in at 70% of ARV on every single property no matter what they listed it at? Which means I'd also have to estimate repairs, which I wouldn't know how to do without looking at the properties and even then I'm not confident I could estimate repairs. Even if I was good at estimating repairs, am I going to visit every single property that I find a listing on? I mean I'm finding tons of things for sale, albeit I have a somewhat broad set of search criteria.

So when I look at a ton of different listings, how do I decide what’s worth a little more investigation and what’s not?

I'd recommend doing a BRRRR if you're interested in doing both a flip and a rental. I am helping my dad with his first deal right now. The properties you should be interested in are the ones that need some light updating. Use that as leverage for negotiation, and offer very low to see how motivated the seller is. You'll never know how motivated they are unless the listing agent says they're motivated or you put in a very low offer and they come close to meeting it or accepting it. For example, our property we're on right now. We honestly didn't know how much the rehab was going to cost, but we could get an idea by general rules of thumb and we are friends with a seasoned investor who gave us some ideas on what things would cost. The property was up for 90, we offered 60 and after some negotiating we got it for 75. The total rehab will be about 15 and the property, based on the comps, should appraise for around 120. If the banks loan 75% loan to value we should get a loan for around our total amount in the deal, 90. We will probably pay a little more than that with closing costs and if we go slightly above our budget, but we'll get a property that cash flows for under $5,000 which is awesome. To analyze it we had an easy step-by-step procedure we followed. Saw the listing, estimated rehab based on pictures or visits, went on Rentometer to see the potential rent, and plugged everything into the BRRRR calculator on BP. Before doing this you'll have to figure out how you're going to finance these, whether it be cash or hard money. We used hard money but that's ultimately up to you. If you have the cash you could really have some negotiating power and get into a property for cheap. This comment seems very jumbled but I hope it makes sense. I'm very new to this but I'm learning a lot with this first deal. Please message me for more advice!

@Jerryll Noorden

Thank you for the advice! I'm currently working on my website and it'll be ready by the time I send out mail.

Hello people of BiggerPockets,

I am just getting started and have a few questions regarding direct mail, so for all the experienced people out there I'd love to hear your opinions.

I am looking to outsource my direct mail because it is taking a long time to hand write envelopes that are being stuffed with sub-par printed out letters. It is also costing me 60 cents per letter to mail out. I am looking for a quality company to send out direct mail. I am thinking about doing postcards because the person doesn't have to open an envelope and can already see my message, and they're generally cheaper than letters, any thoughts on that logic? I'd love advice on the postcard v. letter decision. In addition to that, does anyone have any specific companies that they have loved and would highly recommend? I looked at postcardmania, got a quote and it was about 50 cents per postcard when I send out around 1,000. I'm looking at the forums and see click2mail, yellowletters, etc., but was wondering if anyone has others they recommend.

Also, I have a list of about 500 high equity absentee owners I got from listsource. I want to get a list of about 500-1000 high equity owner occupants and just want some advice on a good place to get that list? 

I'd love to hear people's opinions on this topic, as there are so many places to get lists and outsource direct mail. I'm from the Kansas City area too if that helps any.

Thank you!

@Ehsan Rishat thanks for the response! I definitely agree, hand writing is very time consuming. Do you think I should print my own or just order from a company? Also, while I send those out, should I door knock in areas I’m not sending mail?

Thank you for the response! If they find leads for me to wholesale, would they charge a fee, or is it normal to give them a percentage of the deal?

I have been hand-writing yellow letters to a tax delinquent list for a couple weeks now and am just trying to get a plan put together for generating leads to wholesale. I am in college so I was thinking in my free time during the week I can write letters and mail them out, but on the weekends I can drive for dollars and knock on the doors of distressed properties. If anyone has done something similar to this I would love to hear your advice, or if anyone has any tips or other ideas I can implement please let me know. I'm open to anything! 

I am looking for people who have done new construction in or near Kansas City. I am in Lawrence, KS and am wanting to learn more about tearing down property and doing a new build. There are properties on a decent amount of land that could potentially be a good place to do a new build, but I don't know the proper steps to see if it's feasible. Also, I need to learn what research to do in terms of zoning. If anyone has any experience in this area I would love to learn more about it because it is something I'd be interested in doing in the future. Message me and I can give more details/questions I have! Thanks.