All Forum Posts by: Russell Brazil
Russell Brazil has started 177 posts and replied 16824 times.
Post: DST's - are they solid?
- Real Estate Agent
- Washington, D.C.
- Posts 17,651
- Votes 30,539
Ive never found a DST that I love. Their returns arnt going to be the best, but they can be good. They serve a purpose, and that purpose is basically to receive 1031 funds.
Post: Evaluating Non-Performing Notes—Your Quick Checklist?
- Real Estate Agent
- Washington, D.C.
- Posts 17,651
- Votes 30,539
@Chris Seveney is the note expert and probably has some insights
Post: Hello Biggerpockets community 👋🏽
- Real Estate Agent
- Washington, D.C.
- Posts 17,651
- Votes 30,539
Welcome to BP @Marcus Johnson. This is a great place to learn and network
Post: Did Brandon Turner really lose $14M of investor money while pocketing $4.4M???
- Real Estate Agent
- Washington, D.C.
- Posts 17,651
- Votes 30,539
Quote from @Chris Seveney:
Quote from @Don Konipol:
Like almost all social media innovations, BP was (is) heavy on tech - but the real estate personnel are mostly “lightweights”.
This was obvious 15 years ago, but BP was still made into a valuable resource. Especially for the newer investor hoping to learn the basics of investing in SFR.
The fact that some people had a personal side agenda shouldn’t be surprising. Contrary to Barry Minkow ( whom I believe is a career criminal) most deals gone bad are not fraud; they’re usually the result of a “surprise” in the market/economy, undercapitalization / over leverage, or less than competent management/organizers. The ones that are fraud from the beginning, like Minkow’s ZZZZ Best, are a rarer occurrence.
Here’s what I want to know when investing as a passive investor - is the head person a techie, a “salesperson” or a specialist in the particular type of investment being offered. If the first or second, I’m out no matter how good the numbers look.
This is of course no guarantee of successful investment. But I want to eliminate the obvious highest risks.
I follow that same principal, if the top dog is not in real estate with 10+ years I am out. When I researched appleway which made a lot of news in texas for going under, a simple search on the website saw both partners had very little real estate experience and their "project managers" were overseas VA's.... Red flags galore.
Regarding the other post on companies doing due diligence, they exist, Mick Law, Factright and others provide sponsor due diligence reports (They are not cheap), but they are very very detailed (we had a factright report done), and most sponsors would not pass the sniff test, which is why they do not get them.
One of the big red flags I looked for over the last half decade was any offering that wasnt pricing in substantial interest rate hikes. All of the ones I looked at did not have this, thus why I did not invest in any syndications over the last half decade. Some of the ones I looked at turned out fine....usually because they sold the asset earlier than the anticipated hold period. But many of the ones I looked at are in dire financial straights right now.
Additionally one of the things you mentioned in that they be in real estate for 10+ years. I didnt look at that metric per se, but what I saw over the last half decade was a number of flippers, small residential landlords, brrrr people who were getting into the syndication space. Now as someone who sells both residential and commercial real estate, I understand the fundamental differences. We sold numerous commercial properties to people who just didnt understand the risk of what they were buying. My sellers who sold at 2020-2022 knew they were selling at the top of the cycle. The buyers, didnt really have an idea that that was the case.
The inexperience of those doing these deals, and coming from more of a residential real estate background didnt understand the impact of interest rates. While rising interest rates do not largely affect residential real estate, they do in fact affect commercial real estate. The lack of understanding of interest rate risk, I believe is one of the fundamental causes of the current crisis.
Post: prospective tenant would like to make 2 pages of changes to the lease
- Real Estate Agent
- Washington, D.C.
- Posts 17,651
- Votes 30,539
My answer would simply be, Im not willing to pay my attorney to review these changes.
Post: The Downfall of BiggerPockets Forums?
- Real Estate Agent
- Washington, D.C.
- Posts 17,651
- Votes 30,539
Quote from @Eric N.:
― Albert Einstein
AI is a fool. Overestimate it and you will make fool of yourself.
On a side note, I didn't notice the annoying and overwhelming spread of AI-generated text on this forum. But then, I am always here to search for a specific topic and may accidentally stumble upon something featured as "Newest" by BP.
Speaking of which, I believe one of the biggest shortcomings of this forum is that most of the content (either deliberately or due to the incompetence of the developer who created the platform for the forum) is hidden, unless you spend time searching for it. Almost any other forum I am aware of has an obvious map visible when you open the main page. There is usually a long list of sub-forums, with "General Discussion" and a couple of similar topics pinned to the top, and the rest neatly organized by subjects. You would then click on one of the subject links and open the next page where all the topics would be chronologically ordered, with the top thread also being the one that had the last response.
It's not the same here. This forum has a weird design. When you hover your mouse over the "FORUMS" tab, you see an annoying "hidden/not now hidden" screen with links to five sub-forums, each then having two to eight sub-sub-forums listed under it. Good luck searching for and finding, say, the Real Estate Wholesaling Strategy Forum, unless you know it exists and use Google to search to find it. The same goes for other sub-forums. Imagine how many people find this forum, browse it, get frustrated because they can't find the content they are looking for, and leave without asking or posting meaningful question or engaging in a debate. I don't remember how this site was functioning in the past, but I suspect this "what you look for is hidden/buried deep where you can't find it" strategy is somewhat new to BP and its implementation may have coincided with the steep decline of this forum's overall popularity.
I can't imagine that the people running this site are complete fools. Therefore, I assume that whatever shortcomings we see are the intended goal, and this is how the website owners want it to be. It's not result of the incompetence of one developer or malicious intent of few other moderators. It seems to me that BP simply keeps the forum as an appendix to the site and business they run, and it's something they would rather bury 6 feet under and not let thrive, as if it were some sort of a nuisance.
There's definitely some grains of truth to what you're saying that I can say as an insider, and long time moderator, and content creator for BP.
Many years ago, BP simply was the Forums. They eventually added some blogging features. The heyday of the Forums it was the singular most important thing of the site, and organic SEO was a more important thing with Google at the time. So, the forums always came up high in Google searches.
Fast forward a few years, and social media, video and YouTube became more important to BP for its revenue growth,...and really became more important to the consumer. Users of the forums were sacked away to the Facebook groups. The groups were less usable for someone trying to learn about complex subjects...and were far harder to moderate, leading to a more toxic experience on FB for the moderators.
There isn't much money in the Forums. The money is in social media and YouTube, so thats where the resources of staff, content creators and users ends up these days.
Post: BiggerPockets Crooks, Scammers, Deviants, Fake Identities & Con Artists
- Real Estate Agent
- Washington, D.C.
- Posts 17,651
- Votes 30,539
Quote from @James Hamling:
How do we get @Moderators to pin this thread to top of forums like BP notices?
Because this is the MOST needed PSA of all!
Ask and ye shall receive
Post: Crazy how many realtors are unresponsive
- Real Estate Agent
- Washington, D.C.
- Posts 17,651
- Votes 30,539
There's only 300 people in the entire country that do over $100 million a year. So I dont think thats a great benchmark, as most markets dont even have someone that sells that much.
Post: Why we don’t use an LLC for flipping and do everything in our own name
- Real Estate Agent
- Washington, D.C.
- Posts 17,651
- Votes 30,539
You just admitted to fraud in an open public forum.
Post: No rent - 45 days delinquent
- Real Estate Agent
- Washington, D.C.
- Posts 17,651
- Votes 30,539
File for eviction. Eviction notices are like magical pieces of paper that make money appear in my bank account within a few days of the tenant getting them