All Forum Posts by: Randy Rought

How would you find out who is a top producing agent or brokerage?

I will be taking my Colorado realtor license exam next week, and am feeling pretty hopefull that I will be passing on the first go round.

I live east of Parker, so I am considering the Parker, Castle Rock, Elizabeth, Franktown, Centennial, southern Aurora areas, and maybe even further West into the more southern region of the Denver Metro area.  I was hoping some of the RE Brokers on BP could give me some insight and pointers in picking out a brokerage to work with during my first two years. I am an older dog, and want to get on board with someone where I will learn how to do things right, and get a couple of sales under my belt. My overall goal is do residential and maybe later get into property management. 

Some articles I have read state that hooking up with a national chain-type brokerage would be the best as they have established training programs to help in getting started. Some other articles suggest getting with a smaller brokerage as you would get more hands on mentorship.  What do my fellow BP RE professionals suggest?

I just renovated a condo I bought in foreclosure in the Springs. The cabinets were water damaged. I stained them the same color. I lightly sanded them, stained them, and then covered them with poly. They came out great. The parts that were damaged took the stain, and the parts that were not didn't. It blended well. They looked new when I was done. It cost me one pint can of stain, and one pint of poly.  

I had the same thought. I suggest saving the money and paying cash. It will be cheaper in the long run (no interest paid out), and if you save the money, you will earn some interest on your money in the mean time. It would be best to buy and build mortgage free. As an option, you might find some owner financing. I bought 10 acres down in the Westcliffe area (8400' alt). Its a great area. I wanted to build a 2b/2ba/2 car garage "cabin" and I would have started that actual building in 2009, but I ended up getting married that spring, and the cabin is still isn't built (major change in my bachelor house design)... You gotta watch out for that pitfall    :)

One slight disagreement with Desiree. When doing your due diligence;  You can get a O&E from a local title company for $5-10, AND (not or) go into your county records. They are online for Colorado countries. Get all the information you can. There is never too much information. You have to watch the lien priorities. Also be aware that in Colorado, we have a "superlien" for HOAs. If they haven't been paid, you will have to pay up to 6 months back dues. The county where you are going to do foreclosures has online instructions.

This website is great for just about all the Colorado counties. They have the foreclosures listed on here.

http://publicrecords.onlinesearches.com/Colorado-F...

Figure out your percentage of profit you are willing to take, develop you maximum bid, and stick with it. Take into consideration all your costs for renovation, utilities during renovation, taxes, insurance, HOAs, and any other costs you can think of. Decide if you are holding or selling (and all closing costs). I did my first foreclosure last summer. I decided to start off with a condo as a "starter" property. It was cheaper and I had the cash. We also didn't have to deal with externals (landscaping, exterior painting, roof, etc). I did all the renovation work myself because I had been laid off and had the time and knowledge. We probably overdid it on quality for our first flip, but its a great learning curve. In fact I just put it under contract tonight.  awesome feeling.

Randy Rought

I was passed the following website for checking out tenants. I haven't actually used it yet, but I have heard good things. They get inputs from quite a few places including past landlords (if possible). http://www.tenantdata.com. I would recommend checking this out. You can arrange it that the new tenant pays for the query and you get the data. I highly recommend you do "Due Diligence". If someone has a poor credit history of making payments, criminal history, or poor tenant history of damages, as they say "A leopard doesn't change it spots".

I agree with the others that you should have a Real Estate Attorney handle the sub-lease. There are too many issues in copying someone else's lease. You don't know what type of quality control there is. Was it written by an 18-yr old who thinks they know everything? It's a roll of the dice. You will alleviate any concerns by having an RE Attorney writing it up and protecting your ***-ets. When I was looking for a Real Estate Attorney, I queried quite a few, and the one that left me with a good impression and that I selected was:

Richard Sugg

The nice thing about Colorado is that you can do it online. There are numerous on-line companies offering this course. I am presently in the middle of doing this myself.

Something to consider. A few years ago I saw a truck dealership (commercial trucks) that had quite a few of the smaller delivery type trucks being displayed along the road (small box on the back like a small U-Haul with a van type front end). I had just bought my Silverado and saw that the prices were almost half of what I paid and it had more hauling space. I made a mental note to check these out when it came time to replace my truck. These also give you lots of advertising space on the side.   

Casey,

I am a retired blue-suiter and have had a couple of rental houses for years (lived in and then PCS'ed). I still have one that is all paid off. Since I retired, I have been working as a Defense Contractor for a decade, and got RIF'ed, so I have moved over into real estate as a serious change in my career field.

Spending the dollars after deciding to get started was the toughest part. I read, studied, and it wasn't till that I raised my hand to bid $50k at a foreclosure auction, and the auctioneer said "SOLD", that the reality hit me. I bought a foreclosure condo as my first, and am just finishing the renovation. I will have it on the market within a couple of weeks. I have learned so much. I recommend buying a condo/townhouse as a training platform. Starting small and learning to walk before you run. You can go through the whole foreclosure, renovation process, and resale with the least amount of money on the table. Learn the process and build from that.  That's my 2-cents. :)

I wish to specifically thank Jon Holdman and Bill Exeter for their insightful comments. I feel that they provided me with excellent mentorship on our impasse. Sorry for the delay since your initial comments were posted, but we have been contemplating our situation and finally reached a decision.

While the majority of the comments above suggested they preferred the concept of buy and hold, we bought this condo foreclosure as our first investment (literally a training property) and it has been very very educational.

Based on all the comments and more importantly deciding on what/where we want to end up, we decided we will sell this condo and use the proceeds as a stepping stone to invest in a larger and closer property (SFH preferred or even a Townhouse). The future properties we will acquire will become the start of our real estate empire (buy and hold).

I would whole-heartedly recommend first time investors buy a condo as a training property. It is generally cheaper to acquire, you still have all the foreclosure, rehab, and flip concepts to deal with, but you only have to deal with the interior of the structure (reduced repairs). There are no landscaping or exterior issues to worry about.

Appreciate all the comments from the BP neighborhood. Bravo Zulu everyone.