All Forum Posts by: Tanner Lewis

I suggest reading J Scott's books in the BP store. They're about $12 and give a full in-depth overview of the flipping process. 

I believe a BP Pro subscription gives you free access to RentRedi, a property management software that plenty of investors use to self-manage. 

Quote from @Kevin D.:

I'm looking to buy my first rental property. I live in CA and want to buy out of state. I am a buy and hold investor looking to buy a small single family home that at most needs major cosmetic work done. My question to you all is how do you go about building a team and in what order do you recommend doing things? For example 1) Should you find a real estate agent before or after finding a house you want to put an offer on? 2) Do you hire a property management company before or after you purchase the property? 3) Will an agent and PMC help you find good deals? Any other suggestions you could offer a beginner would be appreciated.

The first two people you need to get are your real estate agent and your lender, and they can help connect you with the rest of the team members you will need. Oftentimes, your lender will have certain requirements they need each property to meet to ensure that they can finance the deal (it is the worst to get an ineligible deal under contract). Have them communicate their requirements to your realtor so you can find a deal that can be financed quickly and painlessly. 

I use BatchSkipTracing to find owner info, phone numbers, and emails. With a lot of these deals, they will be very disheveled, and you will need to buy them with hard money instead of conventional financing. 

Hey Sam - I see many investors invest court of the state for their first few deals. David Greene wrote "Long Distance Real Estate Investing" which gives you a great tutorial, but I suggest looking at deals in the Midwest or the Southeast to allow your portfolio to get a good base of cash flow, and then once you are ready for some more appreciation focused deals, you can change your target markets. Don't be afraid to invest out of state! 

For investing with partners and liability, I highly suggest using a DSCR loan and borrowing within an LLC. It helps break down ownership of the asset legally and protects your personal assets and your real estate asset from lawsuits.

Hey Emily, I think it is worth it if it is expected to cash flow some in the long term. You can also structure the loan to give you a little extra cash flow in the first couple of years. With these deals, I structure them as partial interest-only loans, with you only making interest payments for the first 10 years. Then, in year 11, you will begin paying down the principle amount of the loan over 20 years. 

You won't be protected by anonymity on this deal, but moving the title into the LLC intra-rehab may help with asset protection.

Just offer what makes sense with your numbers, there is no point in overpaying if it does not make sense with your numbers. 

It depends on the platform. Deals that are sold quickly usually leave less information, and deals that take more time to sell usually leave more. It also depends on your risk tolerance for what makes sense. When looking for more information, I use the usual Zillow and Redfin etc, and then fill in the gaps with TICOR, and Batch Skip Tracing.