All Forum Posts by: Frank Jiang

Cryptocurrency is a fad for people trying to get rich quick and people will slowly trickle out of it as it continues to demonstrate no value add to any real-world application.

The way you framed this question is not impartial and it shows your own personal bias as opposed to actually just asking for opinions.

That said, I think it can be clearly deduced that the situation we have here is a breach of lease sublet, which is incredibly common in the Bay Area.  The tenant's argument that he's "too tired" to fight this legal battle holds no water, as establishing residency is incredibly easy if you are actually living somewhere.

I also think the landlord made some missteps in their process.  When trying to implement these large increases in rent controlled and tenant-friendly environments, it is incredibly important to dot your i's and cross your t's.  She should have created a clear legal paper trail that the tenant had broken lease by sending a cure or quit for the "roommate" and then established that the legal resident had either abandoned or vacated as a result.  Because she did not, the tenant can simply argue that they were simply travelling or temporarily offsite and that he does still in fact reside at the residence (much like he is claiming).  Because the landlord did not do these things, this would be messier than necessary if it actually went to court.  It's a good lesson to move with precision in dealing with these sorts of situations.

Easiest way is to just debit retained earnings and credit a reserve account for however much you want to reserve.

They will all go to institutional investors.  It's not really feasible for them to sell them one at a time on the open market.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/z...

What you're saying makes sense, but Zillow's actions don't fundamentally align with what you're describing.  Historically, a market maker makes profit by arbitraging the difference between the bid and ask price.  The key principals are:

- Minimize inventory to reduce market risk: Zillow didn't do this.  They kept inventory on hand, thus leading to this situation.  I think with their platform, they actually could have done this differently to minimize holding inventory.  They could have done a "matching" program prior to taking the house into inventory, where a seller can indicate to zillow that they want to sell and they can find a buyer prior to taking ownership.

- Optimize spreads between bid and ask: Zillow didn't do this.  They paid over market, possibly on purpose in order to gain market share, but we all see the results.

So while the theory of being a market maker sounds magnificent, Zillow doesn't seem to fundamentally understand how to do it properly or even what it really meant.  I agree that the current environment is incredibly inefficient and ripe for disruption, but just because something is different doesn't mean it's smart or that it will work.

1) You forgot about insurance and taxes

2) What you're doing is just fun with numbers.  Have you actually seen this property and the state that its in?  Putting 5% into a spreadsheet for capex suddenly makes a lot less sense when you go there and realize it needs a new roof and 3/8 AC units are thrashed.

3) You sure this is a "Class C" property? As you've seen, it's very easy to make poorly performing apartment complexes look good by just plugging in assumptions, but once you own the place, you'll realize that things like 5% maint, 5% capex, and 8% vacancy are numbers you could only dream of.  Also, "Class C" is a catch all for sellers to refer to their D or F class property since its a classification with no real borders.

At the end of the day, building a model and throwing some numbers in is easy.  The part that is far more important is being able to analyze whether or not your assumptions are valid.  What you should do is call this place as an interested buyer and ask for a few things to validate the numbers you're putting into the model, such as their rent rolls (you will see if collectability or vacancy is an issue), historical costs and income statement if available, and any large capital expenditures that are coming up.

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Depends on your relationship with real estate.  If you are just looking to make a deal, being able to do proper due diligence, analyze the deal, remodel a house, etc.  No, where you went to college has absolutely nothing to do with your ability to succeed.  That's the beauty of real estate.  You can get in with a diverse skillset (blue collars have a ton of synergy with real estate) that doesn't necessitate a degree.

But with that said, let's be clear.  What I referred to above is good enough for an individual or even their whole family to get rich, but it is ultimately a small-stakes game.  The big players and the largest real estate funds and acquirers are large organizations that absolutely care about what the pedigree of its employees looks like.  It's like working at an investment bank (some of the biggest real estate players are investment banks). They look for young and driven ivy league graduates.

I think it's generally poor judgment to post this sort of thing.  You can pretty much expect a ****storm of opinions (many of which are uninformed) and very little actual intellectual gain coming from the discussion.

Here are the facts regarding this matter:

1) Unvaccinated people are not a protected class.  FL has EO21-81, which states the following: "Businesses in Florida are prohibited from requiring patrons or customers to provide any documentation certifying COVID-19 vaccination or post-transmission recovery to gain access to, entry upon, or service from the business".  Meaning from a legal perspective, as a business, you can't ask about their vaccination status, but if you find out someone is unvaccinated in some other way, there's no legal protection for these individuals from eviction based on their vaccination status.  Whether or not this landlord counts as a business is debatable (I would argue that yes, he is in fact a business).

2) This is not a HIPAA violation.  I would really appreciate it if people stopped contributing to this misunderstanding.  HIPAA only prohibits the release of protected health information (PHI) by others without your consent.  Barring other laws (such as EO21-81 in FL which states that businesses in FL are not allowed to force people to provide documentation of vaccination), your employer or your landlord can in fact ask you whether or not you are vaccinated.  In other states that don't have things like the FL EO, they can fire you for being unvaccinated.  This is not against the law.

3) Is this smart business?  No, as only about half of FL is vaccinated.  It's never smart business to remove half your TAM just to support your political beliefs.  Should you personally give a **** about this guy's decision?  NO!  Get back to your own business and spend less of your time on things you can't control (politics) and more on the things you can.

You pay off debt.  Paying off debt is risk free.  The return on an investment is not risk free.  Typically, credit cards should be paid off before pursuing investments.  Car, Home, and student loan debt will typically have a lower interest rate than you can make from reinvesting and so you should invest instead of paying off these debts if you have adequate reserves.