All Forum Posts by: Ryan Friess

If you're looking in Florida, it'll be hard to cashflow in South Florida. Homes just tend to be more pricey here. I have a couple of friends that have been fairly successful in Tampa/Orlando/Gainesville areas. Maybe check those spots out as the homes are on the rise, but seem to still be reasonable.

Awesome post and congratulations on your first BRRRR!!! Out of curiosity, how did you find and vet your original GC?

@Sam Issa Thanks, mate. I look forward to joining these.

I'm not a very experienced investor, but I own a rental and live in a second property I own. I'd recommend reading a few REI books first.

There are so many to list. The most important is knowing your numbers. If you don't know how to calculate cashflow accurately, you're taking a shot in the dark. Graham Stephen has a great video tutorial on calculating Cashflow: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgWcrsavcJs&t=155s

Also, a lot of rookie investors (speaking from experience), don't fully understand the closing costs associated with buying real-estate. So make sure you do your homework and understand the additional costs on top of the downpayment.

You'll also want to ask yourself if you want to manage the property yourself, or if you want to outsource the management of the property too... you guessed it! A property manager. This will cut into your overall profit, but could make your life much easier. A good property manager could also act as a great resource for you as you acquired new rental properties.

Screen your tenants!!! This one is often overlooked and you hear horror stories all the time about bad tenants. Make sure you get solid references, do a credit check, verify their income, and so forth.

Just a few tips to get started from one rookie to another :)

Nice to virtually meet you as well. I lived in Boca a while back and honestly prefer it to West Palm Beach. It’s a challenge to find a reasonably priced place in Boca though!!

I’d love to do a meetup for the South Florida group in the future when COVID subsides some. It’s always nice to meet other young professionals in the area.

Hello, BiggerPockets community! I'm super grateful to have found a community of so many, like-minded individuals.  I actually found this forum from listening to a podcast of the Mad Fientist interviewing the guys at Bigger Pockets, and immediately checked out the forum.

I'm Ryan Friess, a newbie REI in West Palm Beach, FL. I've been in South Florida my entire life and absolutely love it here. I went to college at PBSC & FAU and graduated with Computer Engineering degree. For those local to the area, I was super lucky to land a job with a Fortune 100 company, JM Family (Toyota) and a year later went through a technical and sales training program at Citrix. I'm now working completely remote for a large technology distributor as a bonafide technical sales guy/trainer.

I also have a semi-successful online Etsy/Ebay store that brings in anywhere around 1.5k-3k net revenue a month.

As far as Real Estate goes, I purchased my first condo in 2017 for around $95,000 and put approximately $10-15k to fix it up. It had a tenant at the time so I was immediately cash flowing around $300 for 7-months before I moved in. I'm currently living in the unit, but am closing on a second condo tomorrow. I'll be renting the old unit to my brother, at a discounted rate, and will be cash flowing around $250. 

My goal is to leverage the equity in my first unit (approx 60k after downpayment/closing) to BRRRR on new investment properties until I have enough passive income to sustain my ideal lifestyle.

I'd absolutely be interested in connecting with like-minded folks, especially in the South Florida area! I just signed up for a boat club in the area, so always happy to share the boating life.

Cheers!

Hi all, first-time poster here, and new REI in South Florida needing a little bit of guidance. I've naturally been pretty frugal, and before getting into real-estate, I paid off the majority of a small, 30-year mortgage on my first condo and have around 90k in equity I'm looking to free up to look for another investment property. I've reached out to about 4-5 lenders and they all said they're not offering Cash Out refinancing right now due to the 'risk' with COVID.

Is anyone else struggling with getting a CoR? 

Thanks, community!