All Forum Posts by: Saif Jalali

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Tampa.

Purchase price: $240,000

If “being thrown in the deep end” was a project, this would be it. After my mother passed away a decade ago, this home fell into disrepair. 6 months ago, having now qualified as an attorney and having a stable cash flow, I decided to rehab the home whilst living in England (the home is in Florida). Given that I am 24, with no prior experience in real-estate and no family to help me, this was a huge project to undertake (alongside a very demanding job). I could not be happier with the result.

This was my first real estate project and, although it was immensely challenging doing so from abroad, I am lucky to have had a very strong team around me to help see this project through. It has also given me the real-estate bug. Having done a project of this size for my first attempt (and having done it successfully), I want to leverage the experience and connections that I have made to do real-estate flipping full time in and around the Tampa, Florida area. 

What was the outcome?

Currently rented out.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

How to implement appropriate lines of communication.

How to delegate and project manage remotely.

Hi everyone

Lovely to virtually meet all of you. I am a new real estate investor and have done one rehab project so far (I am in the process of posting the before and after pictures on my profile now). I am currently working in Biglaw in London, England but am from Tampa, Florida. I plan on coming back to Tampa within the next few months to start a flipping business. 

I moved out of the USA 10 years ago, so I am very interested in networking opportunities with like-minded people. I am 24 years old so would also very much be open to speaking with people who have more experience in this space! 

A fun fact about myself: I have been the subject of a Netflix-style documentary! 

Hi everyone! 

By way of introduction, I am a new real-estate investor and wanted some thoughts on a property manager. I have done one refurb project before and worked alongside someone who acted as a hybrid contractor/property manager. That is to say, he would bid on some aspects of the job to do himself, and also coordinate with other contractors to get things done. He is someone I trust and have known for a number of years. The project closed recently and I am doing some reflection on how to make this relationship more efficient and effective for both of us. The main issue we ran into was the conflict of interest between his role as a contractor and as a property manager. On one hand, as a contractor, it was in his interest to do as many jobs as possible to make as much money as he could. This is, of course, in contrast to my interest in saving as much money as possible (we managed to successfully navigate this, but it certainly was difficult at points).

To that end, I want to use him as a full time property manager (as opposed to a hybrid contractor/manager) so that our interests in the project are aligned. By doing so, both of us have the same desire to get the project done as quickly and cost effectively as possible (as opposed to, in his capacity as contractor, wanting to do as much work to make as much money as possible). 

With this in mind, I would like to know what kind of remuneration structure you have agreed with your project managers? To my mind, the two variables are: (a) time and (b) budget. My thinking is that, if he completes the project on time and on budget, then he would receive a commission as a proportion of our profit (my thinking was 10% of profit). This would be in addition to a fixed fee of $1500 or so regardless of the outcome. In addition, there would be some sort of penalty for the project getting delayed etc. These are numbers I have just come up with, so if they seem too low/high, please do let me know!

To summarise, I would be really interested to hear what your agreements with your project managers are, including:

1. How you pay them (e.g. commission, fixed fee etc)

2. How much you pay them (e.g. what commission, how much fixed fee etc.)

3. Any particular methods you have seen that particularly work (or do not work) 

4. Anything else you think might be relevant here!

This is my first post on BP and would like to thank everyone in advance! I really am here to learn and would certainly appreciate all points of view.

Kind regards

Saif