All Forum Posts by: Steve K.

@Mindy Jensen Hi Mindy I’d bring it in the the guys at Fastenal in Boulder (next to the Spot climbing gym), I bet they have it or can order it for you. Looks like a self-tapping tech screw with a rubber washer for a tin/metal roof.

@Shirley Rozenshteyn How long have you owned in Hartford and what hood are you in? I grew up in Wethersfield but haven't lived there since the 90's. My brother and cousins have multis there. They got in the same time I started here in CO (2009) and during that time they've done a ton of work to their buildings (100 year old buildings) and dealt with some truly rough tenants (section 8 heroin addicts). The buildings are not worth much more now than they paid then even with full rehabs. Meanwhile during the same time period out here I was able to cash out refi to buy more buildings and lucked out with over 7 figures in appreciation. I've been trying to get my brother to sell and move out here but he'd be selling at a loss even after all the work he's put in so he doesn't want to exit he battlefield on his shield like that. Maybe things are turning around there and I hope so. CT never really recovered from the GFC and CO boomed, so not a fair comparison but seeing what they have been through only to have their taxes go up more than the buildings is pretty eye opening. I think Hartford peaked when Mark Twain was alive. Areas like that you can throw as much money at a building as you want but you have to turn the whole neighborhood around to make a difference. I've heard politicians are trying to make central CT the east coast Silicon Valley and the new Governor has a plan for the pension issue, so hopefully positive change is coming but I don't think it has been comparable to Silicon Valley since the Industrial Age when Colt was making arms for the civil war, or Pratt and Whitney later on. It was the richest city in the country back then, now it's in the top 3 poorest. I don't mean to bag on my hometown, it's just my only first hand case study of cash flow vs. appreciation. My bros units make $1,000 (on paper, less in reality) while mine are around $500, but it will take his cash flow about 1,000 years to catch up to my appreciation, and he deals with way more nightmares. He's in the south end. I have other friends in the north end who have really been through hell and have been trying to sell for years but nobody will buy at any price. The surrounding burbs are better, I've had friends do well with SFH rentals in Wethersfield and West Hartford but they inherited them. I would not recommend the Hartford market as a whole to newbie OOS investors at all: like you said there's nobody there willing to manage them and if you do find somebody, there's a good chance they'll put your rent money in their arm, up their nose or in a crack pipe. Sad but true. The cash flow on paper is tempting but coming from those streets I'd warn people to stay away.

I can only do images from my desktop

 Patrick you can post pictures just click on "Image". Or did you mean you can't post these specific pics due to the legality?

Totally. If there was a chance for him to get out with clean hands that ship sailed long ago. Just looking at it now I think that other dude is so much shadier. But I'm just watching this wreck from the crosswalk so what do I know. I also agree we'll probably see a cross-complaint or counterclaim. 

You watched the Marquis thing go down, how does this compare to that in terms of being allowed to continue before charges were brought? Just wondering if you have a sense of when the hammer drops on these guys. 

Jay I agree with you on the Greed and the Guilt 100%, I'm just starting to think the third G is for Gullible. Take a look at the HUD contracts if you haven't. After looking at those and the motions to dismiss where OP slides out leaving CM holding the bag... seems like the work may have been on CM the whole time! Think about it: this other guy (whose name I'm afraid to mention because he's likely a very bad dude) has been in RE a long time, had his license revoked, knows how to set something like this up. I see him being the mastermind and using CM. CM was foolish enough to go along with it even though he was the one whose signature is all over the contracts and his youtube channel is chock full of evidence. This other dude is Keyser Soze 100%. He's like a ghost. CM would have to be stupid to set it up this way. I'd be curious to see how the earnings were divided, I bet OP even got a bigger split than CM.

@Alexandra Fisher

This is one of the most commonly asked questions on here. I think the best advice we can give you is that when you invest remotely you're not investing in property so much as a group of people (agent, PM, handyman, tenants, etc). 

It's more important to find investment-worthy people and invest where they are than to throw a dart at the map and hope it works out with whatever people you can find there. Good PM's and tradespeople are harder to find than you might expect; much harder to find than good properties.  

I was just talking to a friend today who is a surgeon in CA. He has an apartment building in Reno and just found out his PM is claiming several of the units are vacant when they are actually rented and the PM is pocketing the rent. Stuff like this is not uncommon. 

Think about human nature: it's very tempting to put a few bills in your pocket when counting other people's money, especially if you know they are hundreds of miles away and unlikely to find out or be able to do anything even if they do find out. OOS investing is sexy right now for some reason but what you're actually talking about is doing business in an asset class that consists of mostly bad tenants and cutthroat PM's, so just be aware of that. 

There are some good PM's out there, I don't mean to disparage them all, some of them have commented on this thread and I bet even they would agree that they represent a small percentage of PM's while many of the rest are inept or crooks or inept crooks.

For this reason, if I were to invest in RE remotely it would be in an REIT or a syndication because those are at least regulated by the SEC, unless I already knew a rock solid PM that I could trust like a brother.

I also believe cheap areas are cheap for a reason. At the very least go spend time anywhere you're considering and build a solid team there. 

 Just my .02. Good luck! 

Bill the architect of this scam has definitely picked their mark carefully. New investors eager to succeed are impressionable which makes them easy prey. They also come with a shrewd built-in advantage for the predator which is that those who are swayed that much by cute videos are unlikely to be the sort of people who collect kneecaps from those who have crossed them. 

Sub $50k houses work well as the snake oil not only for the "distortion by contrast" effect you outlined but also from a basic practical sense in that it's hard to find a lender on that asset class (which would require inspection/appraisal/professional eyeballs on the deal). $50k is also conveniently too big for small claims court but not big enough to interest many lawyers. 

 I agree with you that this was a work. However I think you have laid out a more in-depth understanding of these traits than CM even has.     

After looking through the court files, I'm starting to believe CM may be as much of a patsy as the victims in this. His success with the videos comes from his relatable "everyman" self-deprecating C-student vibe that at first I thought was an act, but maybe it's not. Maybe he's been set up by somebody more sophisticated and more sinister. 

As a newbie in RE himself, he wouldn't know how to write those contracts the way they were written, or to target new investors, or to use sub $50k houses. I don't see him being cynical or seasoned enough in scamming to set up the sales pitch with a polished bait and switch laced with a potent dose of FOMO the way it was. If he was that slick why is his signature on everything? Why would he put his face and good name all over this obvious scam? Meanwhile his partner is practically a ghost who was just granted a motion to dismiss... 

 I'm actually starting to believe him that he was swindled by his partner. But to be clear this doesn't absolve anyone of guilt. CM must have known what was happening very early on if not from the actual beginning, and made the Faustian bargain when he chose to continue being part of it. He could have quit when it became obvious these houses weren't helping anyone hit their freedom number except him and his partners. At that critical junction he became complicit and (allegedly) fraudulent himself. 

But his partner is looking a lot more like the real Keyser Soze in this crime novel with every turned leaf. Perhaps the most revealing detail is how he's been in the background while everyone has been looking at CM. CM is right out there in the public, inviting us into his home with his videos, a social influencer with a lot to lose by ruining his reputation. Meanwhile this other guy has dozens of different shell businesses set up. His personal name appears almost nowhere in the evidence/exhibits. The address that his summons and subpoenas are going to is the same nondescript warehouse that his dozens of shell businesses are registered to. He has no social media, no pictures, no videos, no online presence, nothing. We know that he's lost his broker's license and been disciplined for RE scams in the past. Seems to me like CM may actually be a lamb being lead to the slaughter. A conniving, manipulative, greedy lamb, but nonetheless not the main architect of this scam, for whatever that is worth to anybody at this late point in the ordeal (probably not much). 

You should check out the new content. I agree you legit turnkey guys are being hurt by this, he’s certainly made me wary of investing remotely. Somebody said on here that an out of state investment is not so much an investment in property as it is in a group of people and that’s spot on. 

Yeah there was one not long ago “How to avoid wire fraud”, this whole thing is stranger than fiction.