All Forum Posts by: Garrick Solberg

I can buy properties that rent for $600 at wholesale prices of $60,000, so I imagine I can find similar houses through my own, direct to seller marketing strategies at closer to $30,000. $300,000 of actual money paid (market value of the homes probably double that) seems doable within 5-10 years.

Hello, everyone.

I've been lurking for the past couple of months, and have thrown out a post here and there as well. I became interested in real estate investment after spending some time researching to buy my own home. I have yet to buy a home for myself, but I am fascinated by real estate investing and want to pursue it further.

I have seen on other message boards how people will essentially have "thread blogs" that will document their progression of information. These can be quite useful, not only for the author's own records, but also for other new investors that can use it as an example of how others got started. My plan is to keep my progress updates within this thread, as well as throw out questions as they come to me. I might ask more specific questions in their appropriate forum, but when I do I will link those theads within a post here.

To begin, I will give you my current status as an investor. Right now I am in the knowledge acquirement stage. I spend a lot of time researching online, as well as regularly attending my local REIA club meetings. I know enough to know that there is a lot that I do not know, but I am trying to envision as much of the process as possible so I can start putting thoughts into action. It seems to me that you have to start at where you want to be mentally to understand what to do know in order to get there. Here is my current list of steps, as I see them now:

5 GOAL: Become a multi-millionaire Real Estate Investor

4: Own multiple properties free and clear with excellent cashflow while utilizing outsourced property management. I will achieve this within 5-10 years.

3: Acquire capital as rapidly as possible via wholesaling, bird dogging, and possibly flipping a home that I live in and rehab. If a certain property appears to be an excellent rent cashflow opportunity, then hold onto it and eventually take out a HELOC for capital.

2: I must find properties that I purchase at a substantial discount. I will pull this off via my own marketing, utilizing bandit signs, newspaper ads, a voicemail prescreening system, website, and networking within my local REI club.

1: Acquire knowledge necessary to understand what is and what is not a deal, understand how to best translate a seller's situation into something that I can profit from and they find agreeable.

Right now I am at stage 1, as you have probably guessed. If there are problems with my line of thinking, then please offer any constructive criticism you may have available. Because I want to put my thoughts into action, I need to write down my plan to overcome the roadblocks that I reach. Here is my current roadblock:

I do not want to start marketing to motivated sellers yet because I do not know what is a good deal, or what to offer in order to make it a good deal.

So far, to overcome this obstacle, I have found a lot of spreadsheets that will give me a lot of statistics. Unfortunately, most seem to be catered towards renting, which is not what I am focusing on right now. In addition, there are a lot of values to define which I am not sure of how to obtain reliably.

For the sake of example, I'll try to find a few purchase opportunities and try to "run the numbers" to see how profitable they are. Until then, thanks for reading this lengthy post, I hope to be able to provide better information as I learn more!

Garrick

Wow, the REI is asking a large amount for his wholesale margin. Typically it's 6-11k, with a few I have heard getting 15k. No wonder the properties have sat vacant for so many years.

I am just getting into rei, but I think I understand what MikeOH is getting at. Basically you will have to personally find these deals via your own marketing. You will not be able to buy a 2% cashflowing property through the mls or probably even wholesale sources. MLS listings wont be even close to getting 1% (unless you find an expired listing and get a successful lowball offer in), wholesales are generally close to 1%. The 2% are going to be achieved by you putting out bandit signs, newspaper ads, etc. stating that you buy homes fast. This is generally how wholesalers find their deals, but instead of wholesaling the house for your margin, you are keeping it for yourself and achieving the 2% a month value. Will you ever be able to rent a property for 2% per month of it's market value? Hell no, but that's why we are investors. It will take more effort, but only people trying to sell you something will tell you that rei is easy.

Well, I definitely want to learn as much as possible, and I am trying to make full use of this site. It is definitely one of the most genuine sources of real estate information I have come across, next to my local REIA meetings. I am looking for software similar to what Kris Kirschner was offering because I am trying to figure out what is a deal and what is not. I think my first goal is to try to wholesale, but the actual profit method will have to depend on the specific situation. I guess if I had to come up with a specific question for now, it would be - when you are speaking to a motivated seller, what information do you gather from them, and how do you transcribe that information into offers (ie, real numbers) that should be profitable to you and agreeable to the seller? Right now I know of ways to advertise that I buy homes, but I'm afraid to do it because I have no idea how to handle the leads once they are in my lap. So, off to more reading, and thank you again for your input and assistance!

Thanks for the replies, guys! Yeah, the seminar (which I did not know was an intro seminar going into it) had a morning and afternoon section. The morning section had me pumped, but it wasnt until the afternoon session that he kept referring to how to do various things with the "cd". If I had known the cost of the cd, I would have walked out right then b/c I wasted a whole afternoon finding out how to use a program that I will not purchase. Apparently his ad worked well with the rest of the group, as people were lining up in droves to put down their deposits. I figured there had to be some more affordable alternative, and some more decent people out there that just want to help rather than make a buck off newbies.

The income property analysis tool seems like it could be very useful, but a lot of it is over my head right now. Also, there are a lot of blanks that need to be filled which I can't really answer. An example would be the various expenses (I have no clue what they will be ahead of time), the whole depreciation section is greek to me, I'm not sure what to expect for sales cost, vacancy rates, appreciation, capital gains tax, vacancy rate, etc. Plus, I can't tell if it has an option to give you suggestions on what is a good offer. Perhaps I am trying to use this in the wrong way, let me know!

Hey all,

This weekend I attended a real estate investment intro seminar hosted by Kris Kirschner. I was dismayed to discover that it was mostly a day long advertisement for his week long, $5000 seminar, but he did touch upon some interesting strategies. His method is called "Autopilot Real Estate Investing", and he has had someone develop some really helpful software to figure out what is and what is not a deal. It will also automatically calculate 3 different offers that should be advantageous to you and fair to the seller. Unfortunately, the software costs $1500, which is far more than I want to spend. I was wondering if anyone had experience with similar programs that are more affordable. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

I would love to purchase a property that brought in 2%, but I don't have the tools available to me (or at least I am not aware of them) to procure such a great deal. I suppose I could offer 70-80% of the asking price on the one multi-unit that is currently listed at 1%, but that still wouldnt add up to 2%.

Hello all,

This website is fascinating, and I was wondering if you could help me decide on what path to take. I am still young (27) and have always rented. I finally have a job that I feel stable in and I plan on living in Jacksonville, FL for awhile. So, for the first time I am considering purchasing a home. While I have a satisfying job as an engineer, the starting out income is lackluster. The regular homes I can afford here are either in terrible neighborhoods or are over-priced rehab projects.

So, it was under this premise that I started considering a purchase of a multi-unit that I could live in one unit and rent out the rest. I also like the idea of possibly having a vehicle for additional income. In fact, if I felt that the effort was worth the income, I would like to expand my real estate portfolio in the long run.

Here's an issue - although there are a decent amount of multi-units on the market, I have found 1, only 1 that would earn 1% of its asking price in monthly rent. From what I have read so far, 1% is measly and should be avoided. Seeing that eliminates all options, perhaps I am searching incorrectly. I am very turned off by the foreclosure listing websites that charge you to view properties. Are there better ways to find them?

I apologize if I seem to be going in a lot of directions with my questions. This is the one of the biggest decisions I will have ever made in my life, so I want to put as much research into it as possible. Thanks!