All Forum Posts by: Matthew Masoud

If I haven't gotten any interest in an apartment after a few week,s I know either I'm overpriced or the unit is not in good enough shape.

Have you had any tours? You may just need to get more aggressive in your marketing. 

Careful, the markets you mentioned are known for high crime environments.

Study the neighborhoods and crime stats.

Just because a BRRRR looks good on paper does not mean it won't be a money pit.

Fellow Orange County out-of-state investor here. You'll want to take a look at the Midwest, it's your best bet to meet the 1% rule. Equity is slower to build there but by finding ways to add value you can get both cash flow and equity growth.

Let's say you find a messed up quad for $250k in Cleveland, OH, for example.

Current rents are $600/unit.

Clean the building up, spend maybe $10k/unit ($40k total) and raise rents to $850/unit.

Now the building brings in $3,400/mo gross and the building is likely worth north of $325k at this point.

Made up numbers but properties like this exist all over the mid west. I know I've owned them

Happy hunting. 

Live in SoCal, but most of my apartments are in Dayton, OH.

Word of caution, Dayton has quite a bit of D class neighborhoods that look like they'd cashflow on paper but in reality will be a money pit. Check crime stats.

Once you lock in on a property, shoot me a DM and I'll send you my contractor out there, he's great.

I've also used a lot of bad property managers in Dayton and ended up self-managing, so be diligent when choosing property managers. Also long long-distance self-managing is not as hard as people make it sound. 

Goodluck.  

Call, text, email, or send letters to landlords. Simply ask if the owner would be open to an offer on the property. Lots of work but it's the best way to get property under market value.

1. You need to start considering multifamily. Single family in general has razor thin margins.

2. You can find decent deals on market, but that likely means placing offers far below asking. You may want to start considering digging off market. Call/emails/letters to property owners is how you buy assets and deep discounts. Plus if you find leads that don't want to sell at a discount but at market you can be the listing agent and make some more downpayment money. 

3. Getting phone numbers/email/addresses is not easy, you just have to dig deeper. If you find the owner look them up on truepeoplesearch.com and try those numbers. If its an LLC take the time to look it up on your states secretary of state.

Are you in the growth phase or the harvesting phase?

If you're still looking to grow, look into 1031ing into a value-add deal. Maybe another multifamily property or retail center where you can still raise rates.

If you don't have the time or energy to continue building the nest egg, you can get some decent yeilds 5%-7% on some strong backed single tenant NNN properties (think Burger King or homedepots)

 They kept me on the platform. I had 30+ listings at the time, so I knew it was a gamble. 

But who are we kidding, they were making stupid amounts of fees from me. Paid them probably over $100k in fees to them in 2023.

Last year, I had a guest check in for a 5-week stay. Within hours, he messaged me complaining about a smoke smell. I acted fast—offered to send my cleaner with an ozone machine that same day. He declined. I still apologized and even asked the tenant in the next unit to stop smoking inside.

Then... radio silence.

Five weeks go by. No complaints. No issues. He checks out like normal. My cleaner goes in, all good.

Then the bomb drops.

I get an email from Airbnb—they canceled his reservation retroactively. Said he “didn’t stay due to smoke odor” and would be fully refunded. Not only that, but they were deducting the refund—over $3,000—from my future payouts.

I was stunned. Furious. The guy stayed the whole time! And now I was getting stiffed?

I tried calling Airbnb multiple times. Nothing. No explanation just the good old Airbnb runaround. 

So I did what every host should consider doing when they’re screwed over—I filed a small claims lawsuit.

Cost me $75.

Weeks go by. Then, right before our court date, Airbnb’s attorney calls me trying to settle for $500. I laughed. Not a chance.

We went back and forth and finally settled for $2,800. I got almost everything back.

Moral of the story: Don’t let Airbnb bully you. If you’ve been genuinely wronged, don’t be afraid to stand up and fight. Hosts need to know we do have rights—and sometimes it pays to push back.

Yeah, insurance used to be an afterthought. A few days before closing on a property, I would reach out and get insurance quotes.

Now it's something I have to do during the due diligence phase. Insurance can really blow up a deal.