All Forum Posts by: Shea Stringert

Quote from @Jared Abelson:

I apologize if this has been covered a million times, this is my first post and I'm getting ready to rent my first house.  The house we have has a substantially sized solar system (10k watt), plus the house is on California's NEM 2.0 plan.  

I'm wondering how do I factor this into rent? Do we just offer free electric?

Any advice is welcome. 

 Electricity cost in CA is absurd. Most rentals won’t have solar either so this is a huge value add. You could price the average monthly cost of electricity and add some/all of that to the average rent. Just make sure to not price yourself our. 

This will be my first event with you all. Looking forward to meeting everyone!

Chris Maudlin this link really helped me. There are so many markets! The Midwest and South are much more affordable but appreciation is less (read a more stable market.) Good luck! https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/12/topics/157014-how-to-research-real-estate-markets

@Justin Windham Thanks for the note. I am actually catching up with Carl later this week, so agree with your advice!

I’m also interested in leveraging my 401K. This is all really sound advice, so thank you. I’m curious if anyone has experience using their 401k as their own bank to fund notes to purchase buy and hold properties? Do the rules change if the property is owned by an LLC versus myself directly? It wasn’t clear from the above if this is legal or not. Where I can read about what’s legal, what isn’t, and any grey area?

Oh man, sorry about the formatting. That wasn’t how I typed it out in my phone...

I’m hoping to hear how others analyze markets, what tools you use, and sites you gather data from. I just read this blog post https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/places-invest-real-estate in which 6 markets were scored across a few categories: - median rent: median value - rent to income - taxes to value - insurance to value - average appreciation - unemployment - crime - population growth A few people commented afterwards and highlight job diversity, % renters, and % vacancies are also important. As far as sites people use, I’ve only heard of city data but I’m not very familiar with that site. I’ve tried using CL and apartments.com but that’s a lengthy process to investigate just the rental averages, let alone the rest. How do those who analyze markets often do this quickly, or better said, efficiently. I’m not afraid of the effort, I just don’t want to take 100 hours for something that could take 10 with the right tools. So my questions: - Are there free spreadsheets people use to streamline this quickly? I’d love a tool that used equations to quickly add up analysis across multiple markets. - What sites do you use to pull macro data from? - Are there more than one that specialize in certain things? - What other key measurements do other suggest? A little about me: I’ve been researching REI for a few years now, bouncing between active member and lurker here on BP. Now that I’m a new dad, I’m reinvigorated to reach my financial goals of generating enough passive income from REI that I no longer need my 9-5. I’ve been in contract on a few investment properties but unfortunately was unable to close. Now that I own my family home in the Bay Area with some built in equity, I’m ready to leverage that equity and my savings to get into the game. My goals are to start with 2-4 unit properties that cash flow at least $200-$300 per door, in Class B neighborhoods primed for stability and or growth. I’d like to start in a market materially less expensive then CA where I can get into a 3-4 unit for $300 -$400K and have a solid management company manage it. I’m at the point where I’d like to find 1-3 markets I can actively work to help increase the odds of finding the right deals. Hopefully some veterans out there can help me streamline my research skills. I’m very open to working with folks who need help doing this grunt work themselves if they’re willing to share their tools and process’. In fact, I’d love to do this!

I sadly missed this one but would love to come to the next. I signed up for the meetup group, will that ensure I get the invite here for next month?

Editing this as I found it in settings.

James - what are the tools you use when initially looking into new locations. I’ve done the obvious look ups on LoopNet and apartments.com for costs and rental rates, but find it hard to really get to know the dynamics of a neighborhood, what’s driving costs and rents, etc.