All Forum Posts by: Samantha Smith

My husband and I ride our bikes all over town and we take note of all the abandoned property addresses, but we never do anything with the info. I don't think I have the knowledge to negotiate an off market deal successfully. 

Any tips on where I can learn more about how off market deals go down?

 Thanks!

Samantha

Bill thanks for your reply. I have. 

There are about 20 duplexes in the area. I haven't come across any tris or quads. Two just came on the market as a bundle deal (so 4 doors) for 320k and they are renting for around 600/month. I haven't bothered to run the numbers on it though, because it's too rich for my blood ($$$). 

I also found a two story FSBO that I considered trying to find out how I would be able to turn it into a duplex, but I wouldn't know where to start to even attempt to find out if it's legal and how much it costs to do it.

I also found a nice mobile home on 2 cleared acres that I thought about buying and then separating the two acres and putting a repossessed mobile home on the second acre (you can get pretty nice repos here) and renting them both out. The mobile home by itself wouldn't cash flow enough to cover the expenses, but adding a second unit would make up for that. Again though, I know nothing about how to research the legality or costs. 

Do you have any advice on researching local laws? Would a real estate lawyer know these types of things?

As far as short term rentals there isn't really a market for it here there are 3 STRs within 25 miles of here. If I was going to stay in the area and manage it myself I might consider giving it a go, but I hope to leave the area by next summer. I dream of owning a vacation rental in the Poconos, but I'm worried about running a vacation home from a distance. I know there are people that do it, but it seems so high risk I can't really justify it.

Thanks!

Samantha

Thanks for your reply. I haven't figured out how to "tag" people on here so I hope you see this.

I feel like you're right, but I can't get out of my head what's said in so many podcasts. They ask their guests what is the difference between successful investors and those who fail or never get started. So many of them say you just have to get out there and make it happen the universe won't just give you some amazing deal and if you just wait you'll be waiting forever. 

I have been working on my credit, opening new credit lines, and saving capital. Hopefully I'll be in the game soon.

Thanks again!

Samantha

Thanks for your feedback. I am asking questions and I don't plan on just jumping, because someone else is doing it. I do appreciate your cautionary advise though.

I do still think understanding the taxes and rules are important for making and educated investment choice and if anyone has the answer on who they go to for these types of things in this area I'd appreciate it. I'm not looking for a referral or anything, just a simple " the county tax accessors office" or the "magistrate of whatever" or "my account" "my real estate lawyer" would suffice. I'm not asking for anyone to tell me the rules just to point me in the right direction to get the rules myself.

Thanks again!

Hello all,

Thank you for taking time to read my post.

I'm having trouble finding a good deal. There are a couple factors in my market that may be the reason for this. I'm looking for advice to help me decide if I should move on to another market (remote investing) or keep looking for the right deal in this market. I should mention I am a new investor and own zero property, I'm a renter myself currently.

The first thing to know about my market is that it is a small town built up around, and completely dependent on, an active military base. 

Some might not be aware how this effects a market, but the long and short of it is 95% of people living here long term own their house or build on family land (I imagine this typical of most small towns.) Thus almost all of the renters in this area are military families coming in and out of the area constantly, some being here as short 18 months before moving on. 

This short timing leads to higher turnover between renters. That means fixing up the property, marketing the property, and having to deal with vacancy a lot more frequently than most investors would be used to. 

Because there are thousands of potential renters coming in and out of the area annually, there are many many people who have already invested here and so there are many many similar properties for rent at the same time all of the time. Which drives the rent prices down to stay competitive and avoid long vacancies.

Another factor is that, as many of us know, a lot of people are beginning to see the benefit of owning and the potential of future rental income. My market is SATURATED with cheap houses, decent size homes with decent size lots are plentiful here and most are going for under 120k. So military families coming in are frequently making the choice to buy rather than rent.

So long story short, high turnover in renters and the saturated rental market, make it hard to justify investing here unless the deal is just really really good. 

I've been using the bigger pockets buy and hold calculator to analyze several potential deals, and even underselling the potential expenses (not airing on the conservative side at all) the best deal I found was only making about $50 a month in cash flow.

I've tried getting creative buy looking at tax sales and trying to find owners of property that looks abandoned, but I'm not have much luck off market. To be honest I'm terrified of doing an off market deal since I've never been through the home buying process at all and don't know what to expect so I'm probably not being as aggressive with pursuing off market as I could be.

I want to be Brandon Turner when I grow up, but I'm already older than him so I really want to get started. Anyway, sorry to be long winded, but BP always says in their podcasts that people post questions without giving enough information to get a real answer.

Thanks again,

Samantha

These seem like great questions to ask but without knowing what a good answer is how would you even gain anything by asking? For example, how do you research what classes or credentials they should have taken or should have so that you know what you are looking for in asking these questions?

I'm 100% clueless about real estate and especially str, but I also want to get a rental in the Poconos. How do you go about registering to pay the above mentioned taxes like who do you have to talk to to find out all the rules and where to go to make sure you're following them?

Are these events still happening? I saw on another thread someone mentioned a 2019 meeting not sure if it's already passed as it wasn't in the events page.

Did you ever get into this Joe? I'm in Vernon parish and I'm where you were 3 yrs ago when you posted this. I'd like to hear about your experiences if you ever got into real estate!