All Forum Posts by: Todd Brittingham

George, first off, I resent your comments trashing all turnkey companies. Rather than throw all Turnkey companies in the same bucket of swamp water, you should give some good advice...how about this...

Ariella, you're really going to need an excellent team on the ground working with you on a daily/weekly basis to setup you property and manage it over the long term. You're going to need inspectors, property managers, contractors, and handymen just to name a few. Building this team on the ground can be very difficult from afar, and it really makes sense to take a trip to see what you are purchasing and who you will be working with before making a buying decision. Anything can sound good on paper, but you need to get to the true nuts and bolts of what is going to make the investment work...the property and the people managing it on your behalf.

Collin,

You're going to want to go through the property and make sure all the mechanical systems, foundation, roof, etc. are all in good working order. If you're not comfortable determining this for yourself, I highly recommend you find a good property inspector in your area to go through the house with you. We normally fix or replace anything we feel is going to fail within the next 3-5 years. For example, if your furnace is 15 years old, it might make sense to replace it now and figure it into your initial capital outlay rather than be surprised a year from now. Once you've purchased the home and addressed all the major items, and you're confident of the maintenance record of the home you can come up with an estimate for your repairs. Normally I budget $50 per month, but we have multiple properties and the statistics help even things out when you're dealing with multiple properties. If I only had one property, I might double it to $100 per month just to be safe.

Ariella,

It sounds like you have a great investment here, and I applaud you for taking the leap. There are a number of things you're going to want to understand before moving forward. We actually conducted a series of webinars earlier this year to help my clients understand these same questions. The webinars were focused on those investing in the Michigan market, but I'm certain there is a lot of information contained in the videos that will help you out. Please feel free to have a look at each of the videos at the link below. Note that we were marketing for our cash flow property tour, but that event has passed, so you can skip all the stuff at the beginning and end of the videos...the stuff in the middle is the good stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MichiganTurnkey?feature=mhee#g/c/179D86D4A65524F1

These are great ideas Chuck. Maybe not quite related, but while we are preparing a property for rental or if it is vacant we put up paper blinds in all of the windows, put a beware of dog sign up, and install a couple lamps on timers. This tends to keep any potential "pests" from messing with our property while it is vacant.

David, that's the beauty of blogging and the interaction with social media. There are a number of ways to automate things. I use an application called RSS Graffiti that looks for new posts on my blog and when it sees them it automatically puts it on my facebook business page. Wordpress has similar tools to automatically publish to twitter and facebook. So with a single click I can get my blog post published in 4 different locations. I'm sure there are more tricks, but this is my strategy for the moment.

My point is this...if you take the time to research things you can setup systems to automate your blogging, and save a bunch of time.

Chris,

Read a book called Crush It by Gary Vayner Chuk. This book talks all about the use of social media and how it can transform your business, and a blog is the hub of his model.

It will not happen over night for you which is why I think many people start blogging and stop. However, I guarantee that if you are consistently putting out valuable content, you will be noticed and will generate a big following.

Josh is absolutely right that most folks are missing a huge opportunity by not blogging. Here's the way I look at it. As a real estate investor I'm sure you go to local REIA meetings, and I'm sure that on more than one occasion you've had a delightful conversation with someone that impacted how you thought about a particular situation. Well, blogging and social media give you the opportunity to have those delightful conversations on a daily basis with many many people. It's like networking on steroids. That's the hook. For those that don't get it, they never will...those that do will be very successful.

There are options out there for international investors to acquire financing, you just have to look. I agree with Chris, in that conventional financing is almost impossible to obtain, but there are many folks offering private money financing at very reasonable terms.

Honestly guys I don't understand the debate. Whether it's legal or not is really a mute point. The fact is that if you place an offer on a property, you want to buy the property. Put yourself in the seller's shoes for just a minute. If they accept your offer they are taking the property off the market. Your earnest money deposit is a show of good faith that if you back out of the deal they at least have something for the lost marketing time and expenses they incur to continue to hold the property.

Now, with that said, if you want the property, you're going to have to pay for it anyway, so why not put as big of an EMD down as possible. This is a great way to make your offer stronger, and if you really want to send a message to the seller put down a 100% EMD.

Now I know not everybody has the ability to do this on every offer they present, but think about the message you're sending to the seller when you tell them you don't want to put any money up. If it's between you and another offer that has an EMD and everything else is equal, whose offer will they choose?

Again, the point is to get the seller to like your offer, and a high EMD is one way to do this without increasing your offer price.

Homer,

I haven't had one issue with that clause at all. I'm always up front with them about it, and the conversation normally goes like this...

me: Okay, so you're going to start on Monday August 8th...about how long will it take for you to finish?

contractor: Oh, I'd say it will take me about 4-5 days depending on the weather.

me: okay, so how about we do this...I'll write the contract up so you start on Monday, and I'll give you until the 19th to complete the job...that should allow for any issues with the weather...

contractor: That should be no problem at all...

me: are you sure? If I have a deadline to keep and I'm going to put into the contract that you will be charged $100 per day for any delays.

contractor: no, this is more than enough time to get the job done.

me: okay, great, I'll write up the work order and you've got the job

contractor: great thanks!

You need to be clear with him on your expecations. Let him know that you are running a business here, and if the expectations of quality work and timliness cannot be achieved then he will not get your work.

Furthermore, since you are running a business, another thing you should definitely consider is to put everything in writing in the form of a contract. This is standard operating procedure I have with all my contractors whether it's the first job they're doing for me or the 100th. In this contract I clearly state the scope of work, and that they will not be paid until work is completed to satisfaction. Furthermore, I always have a deadline listed in the contract with penalties if the work is not completed on time. For instance, if a job is going to take 1 week to complete, I normally will give the contractor 2 weeks...this will allow for any small delays. However, after the 2 week period is up, I will charge the contractor a penalty of $50-100 per day (depending on the size of the job) for every day they are late.

I have never had to enforce this clause, but it is very effective in getting jobs completed on time.

Good luck...hope this helps!