All Forum Posts by: Shawn L.

Bit of a mischaracterization I think... You stated yourself that if Bob gets current on his mortgage in forbearance, then they'll give him the loan. Just because Bob isn't getting his way doesn't make him automatically right. 

I refi'd one of my buildings in April 2020 and had to sign an attestation that I had no loans in forbearance. Did another in July 2020 and same thing. Not exactly breaking news.

Put yourself in the bank's (or fannie/freddie's) shoes for a moment. If you were loaning money to Bob, how would you feel about him taking forbearance? Wouldn't you much prefer that he's current on all of his loans before you give him hundreds of thousands of dollars?

While I don't disagree on your bragging comment, what if he were on vacation and had to call a locksmith? Should that be free too? Should the locksmith work for free or should the landlord eat it? What if the tenant locked themselves out of their car? Should AAA be free to everyone too?

Unfortunately in today's world if you don't have written policies and charge one person because you were on vacation but not another because you happened to be around the corner, that could easily be misconstrued as discriminatory behavior. It's ironic (to me at least) that the mindset that creates this snafu is the same that thinks going by the book is taking advantage.

I don't fall into the camp of people bragging about how great they are or how great they're doing with rentals. A good number of people that know me have no clue that I'm in real estate and that is by design. I also think that there are people out there that have absolutely no business being landlords. The problem I have is that the "cancel culture" has simply gotten out of hand. Seems like every other day some person or group is just being completely shamed, fired, harassed, threatened, etc., sometimes rightfully so but often times not.

As others have stated I think the "golden rule" we all learned as kids applies. Treat others as you'd want to be treated. The people hating on landlords just for the sake of hating on landlords should have to follow that rule as well.

What I'm always dumbfounded by is that people hate on landlords but not grocery stores. You can survive far longer without a roof than you can without food but I've yet to see any angry mobs chanting "cancel grocers."

No other industry I am aware of is forced to continue to provide their service without compensation. You can't march into a store and demand free stuff but you can live on my property and not pay rent and I have to continue to provide you a home? Try stealing a cart of groceries and when the police show up tell them it's not your fault because life is just really hard. Probably won't end well for you.

@Misael Carlos Vera Glad you listened to their experiences! For me the takeaways are 1. people die; 2. Don't buy property overseas unless you are very familiar with the laws and the market and have good boots on the ground; 3. Sometimes your properties won't appreciate as much as you'd like; 4. If you buy a garage that relies on revenues from the operations of the garage, make sure that revenue stream doesn't dry up. If it does, time to find a better mechanic to rent the place from you.

Now that that's out of the way, thank them for their lessons and move on to making sure you're all set up for your closing later this month!

@Misael Carlos Vera there's quite a bit of good stuff already said here, however I'll go in a slightly different direction. You say that some people trying to discourage you also owned real estate? Granted I don't know their background but rather than simply dismissing them as a negative nancy just because they're not cheerleading why not talk to them and find out what went wrong for them? Then use that as a lesson?

Yes at some point in your RE journey something will inevitably go wrong, might as well find out what went wrong for them and try to plan ahead to avoid whatever misfortunes they have encountered.

Some people are just negative and by and large you should 100% ignore those people. But if some of the people who are discouraging you have experience in RE as you stated, I'd let them educate you on what went wrong for them, then figure out how you'd mitigate whatever caused their problem(s).

Came here to say basically this. When you have a written criteria, it becomes a pretty simple pass/fail. Takes the emotion out of it and as long as your criteria is not discriminatory (as defined by federal, state and local regulations), it should help keep you out of trouble in the event that someone you reject claims that you did so for some illegal reason.

Nothing to do with the model, there very well may be room for a developer if the costs are low enough to support it. Just need to make sure your acquisition and development costs leave enough for you to end up with money left over after you sell.

By opportunities I mean projects. If you bring a contractor 10 projects a year his pricing to you will be lower than it will for a one-off, all else being equal. He'll become familiar with working for you, will be able to anticipate common issues on your projects, better project contingencies, and of course you'll get the "volume" discount for keeping him busy on multiple projects. He doesn't have to spend as much marketing for your projects and more than likely lower overhead (assuming you don't go around changing things constantly).

Volume discount is similar in principle to buying widgets wholesale. You buy 1 widget at $2.50/each, but if you buy a truckload your per-widget cost may only be $1.50.

Would you sell the house for less to someone that fancies themselves a "flipper" and intends to then turn around and sell it to someone else? Likely not. This is effectively the same as a contractor reducing his profit on your project just because you identify as a developer and not a homeowner.

As mentioned by others, relationships are key, and the more opportunities you can bring to the contractor then the better the relationship gets.

None of the unit rates look particularly high to me, the paint would be high for a single coat but if multiple coats are required that quickly becomes more reasonable. Also not sure if there's trim paint included in that isn't really itemized but blended into the wall paint pushing the overall rate higher.

The question you should be asking yourself is whether all of the work performed was actually required. If so, I don't think you did bad.