All Forum Posts by: Sean Tracey

@Dmitriy Fomichenko looks like I read too fast. I thought he was talking about being past the age of being penalized for withdrawing from the 401k. I agree that he'll need to be very selective when looking for someone to advise him on this particular type of investment plan. While I have never utilized a financial planner for my own needs, I have heard more bad than good, so I hope he's able to find someone competent and professional. 

@Jack Middleton you can speak to your HR department to find out what your options are as far as moving the money to a self-directed IRA. If they allow "in service rollovers" I believe you would be able to do so. In addition to researching here on BP, it couldn't hurt to talk to a financial planner (fee only) since the tax implications of investing in RE with a self-directed IRA would be an important factor. Just make sure you vet them, and they don't try to sell you BS products. You want someone that can really tell you the best course of action given your personal financial/life circumstances.

Hey @Jacob Pereira Ideally, I would get basic cable internet service (in my area it costs me about $35/month) without an annual contract. Other methods, like relying on a cellular data connection, might prove to be cost prohibitive. I think it would depend on how much data would be needed for the video feed. If you could get a mobile hotspot and leave it at the property it might work. Most carriers would charge 10$ per Gigabyte over whatever data limit you have. I just finished reading @Brandon Turner's book on Rental Property Investing, and one of the things that has been sticking in my mind is how he talked about starting to think about how you CAN do things, instead of can't. Kind of a simple motivational statement, but it made me realize how often I tend to think of why things won't work instead of figuring out ways to make them work. With some more research, I believe there could be a way to get connectivity in a cost-efficient manner. 

Thanks for the suggestion for taskrabbit and wegolook @Ian Ray. Always great to learn about more tools that can help streamline processes. 

@Matthew S. my decision would be based on a couple of factors - 

• How long would you like this money to last?
• Does he have additional investments/assets and are they diversified?
• What are his annual living expenses?

From a strictly personal standpoint, I might have leaned towards investing that money in a mixture of stock/bond index funds. My Dad had a pension, would have probably needed the money to last about 30 years and 16k/year (4% of 400k) would have provided more than a sufficient amount of supplemental income for him, as well as having a high probability of success based on historical trends. 

Your method seems great as well, but may require more "active" participation since you or your Dad would need to manage the managers. I also think you're doing a great job of diversifying to mitigate risk, but if I had a limited amount of money I would be more likely to diversify on the level of an index fund where I could potentially be invested in every publicly traded company in the world. 

Your situation may differ, so I hope you're able to reach your goals with whatever investment method you feel comfortable with. I've heard good things about a number of the companies you've invested with.  

@Lorin K. I was thinking something along the same lines lol. Robots, and automation in general, may just have some very cool benefits for real estate investors. Might be some years before the robot overlords become a possibility. 

@Alexander Price that is certainly something to consider. Thanks for pointing that out. I figure the real issue is not so much knowing if they're working, since you'd realize that from not being able to connect to them or see the video feed, but if they did glitch frequently they could become a nuisance. Hopefully there are reliable models that keep this sort of stuff to a minimum. Some may even let you reboot remotely as a troubleshooting step. 

Good point about about keeping them from being capable of capturing toilets @Jerry W.! More for my sake than for legal reasons lol. 

Hi, 

Since I may be investing upwards of 1 hr and 45 min away from where I live, I've been contemplating the logistics of self management. Since it won't always be easy to get there, I thought using IP cameras could be a great way to handle some management tasks. Obviously it wouldn't be practical once a tenant moves in, but if you need to purchase a property to fix up, you could communicate and keep track of contractors/other visitors in the event you couldn't make it to the property. 

1. Buy a few IP cameras (couple hundred bucks), and place them strategically throughout the property where you know work will be done. 
2. Download whatever app needed for that brand camera. 
3. Have a lockbox, the code to which you can change remotely via an app. 
4. Schedule work, contractor goes in with code, cameras detect motion and turn on. 

You can now communicate with the contractor and keep tabs on how things are progressing on the property all from your smartphone screen while you're at work. Once they're done you simply change the lockbox code from your phone. I figure if you alert people before hand of the cameras, get consent and feel you can trust (very important) them, this could be a useful management technique. 

Anyone else doing this? Any of you think it's crazy and wouldn't consider it for any reason?

@Joe Villeneuve what's the downside risk potential of your strategy? What conditions, other than those that result from choosing an obviously poor investment, could cause it to fail, and how much would that failure potentially cost? For context, the bulk of my investments have been in relatively safe index funds. I have some idea of what could cause that strategy to fail for me. When it comes to using leverage, I'm clueless.