All Forum Posts by: Neal McSpadden

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to wait for my offer to be accepted to try them out.

Is there some sort of product that will cover an ugly laminate counter that does not require removing the counter?

I just looked at a house that has a great, but dated, kitchen with floral print counters. There are some beautiful built-ins that are attached to the counter, so I want to just change the look of it if possible.

I mostly target free & clear properties and structure owner financing offers (along with low cash offers).

In fact, I seem to have two townhouses about to go under contract that I'd love to wholesale.

Hi Mehran, the biggest thing I learned was to have reserves. I was doing subject-to deals with a lease/option exit. When 2 of my tenants stopped paying at the same time, I had no reserves to cover the shortfall.

From there it was a domino effect that collapsed everything.

So you need a cushion to protect yourself against Murphy.

Hey everyone! I've been mostly lurking for a while now, but have decided to take a more active role after listening to the podcasts.

My name is Neal, and I'm an investor in the Atlanta market.

I've been around real estate for about a decade, but got badly burned in the crash of '06-'07. I'm a little older and a little wiser (hopefully) now, so I'm wading back into the thick of things.

I've been in lots of other investment markets including stock options and collectible coins for about 15 years now, and those continue to do well.

My main goal right now is to build cash first and cash flow later.

See you around the virtual water cooler.

The only things that really jump out at me is that half the income is from trailer rentals. That's OK, but if you are getting financing for this, the lender will value the lot rental differently than the trailer rental. One is real property, the other is chattel.

So you might find that the lender is only willing to lend based on the income derived from the real property. But each lender is different, etc etc.

As a result, I would look long and hard at how much you are paying for the park and how much you are paying for the trailers. The trailers should be pretty cheap.

The other thing that struck me was the manager living there for free. Typically that's a terrible idea. Even if the math works out the same, paying the manager a salary/commission/whatever and then being a regular tenant avoids confusion in the manager's mind over his proper role. Nothing in the park is his. He's a tenant who happens to have a job located very nearby.

Other than that, there's the usual due diligence stuff. Inspecting everything, making sure things work, testing soil, etc.

On the face of it, seems like an OK deal.

There's a whole forum about it on creditboards.com

This is the standard setup for a hedge fund. The GP is typically a LLC though, but it could work either way.

Fellow Atlantan here.

I'd actually do a mix. Buy for cash, hire management, and refinance.

I'm a big fan of the refi approach because mortgage payments tend to make people rash when screening tenants. If you don't have that pressure, you can be more selective and avoid problem tenants.

Also, definitely buy management unless you want to have a management job. To me, the point of investing is to get out of the earned income business. Once you grow to a certain size, you can bring management in house and increase your margins.

What part of town are you looking at?

For clients late in the game, I can understand the concern over taxation of ss benefits. But for those planning with a time horizon of 15-20+ years, I hope they are planning to retire much wealthier than that. If nothing else, the real income from ss will probably decline substantially over that time frame. But I guess that a whole separate topic.