All Forum Posts by: Thomas Good

@darlene burns

I just read this thread. I have close to 10 years of full time real estate investment experience (rehabbed over 170 houses, own rentals and developed a self storage portfolio of 1100 units) in WV, a declining real estate market. I went to a 3 day FB event in August 2017 to network and hand out cards to newbie investors. I took an employee and one of my contractors.

After listening to the pitch and seeing some of the material (credibility kits), I decided to join the mastery program. If I didn't like it I had time to get a refund. The major thing that my businesses lacked was systems and that is one of the main things that FB stresses. They also talk about the entrepreneur mindset.

Since joining we have implementing many of their systems. They don't necessarily have plug in play systems but have most of the components needed to build a real estate business that you want (rehabs, wholesale, buy and hold, etc.) 

I hired a temporary person just to modify their systems for our use and having been enacting changes weekly. I've also been embracing the entrepreneur mindset. After implementing each system or process I identify someone other than myself to manage the process. That way I can manage the managers instead of having my hand in everything.

FB has a host of coaches from different backgrounds and strengths that you can plug into and can schedule every few days. I will talk to one coach about probates and their processes, a couple days later I will talk to someone else about outsourcing, another about marketing, etc. Many of the coaches don't have the experience that I do but they have gone through the training  program and can still provide good information. All are active investors including the founders.

They offer multiple training events where the majority of the founders attend and train including Than Merrill. I've attended two so far and I feel a learned at least a few good nuggets each day.

I feel with the FB systems that we are implementing our way, that  we can achieve 30 house rehabs, add 200 rental units, and increase our self storage portfolio all in 2018. 

 Do I think my $35k investment was worth the money? Yes. I've bought numerous guru training packages over the years that have helped my businesses including a few that are held in high regard on BP. However none had the depth of information on various forms of real estate nor had the ongoing support that is available with BP.

Do I think others might think it is a scam? Yes. Anytime you spend $35k for education you have to question it's value. I feel like I will recoup this expense and more in just a few months.

Just my two cents.

@Kim Meredith Hampton

Thank you Kim. The site appears to have what I need at this time at a reasonable price. It beats starting from scratch.

@Brad Larsen @Tim Roberts @Kim Meredith Hampton

Thanks for sharing the information. I too am looking for a comprehensive property management procedure manual that I can modify for my purposes. It should cover the rental process, managing rentals, handling repair requests, etc. 

We've owned a small portfolio of rental units for awhile. I'm looking to expand the portfolio locally and continue to manage those out of our office with employees.

Does @Marc Cunningham have such a comprehensive document or documents for purchase? Are there any other sources that may want to sell me a copy of theirs?

I've hired a temporary person to come into our office and create various procedural documents and it would be nice to model after something has already been created versus starting from scratch.

@Christy Holt. I've been full time real estate investor for almost 10 years and have been flipping houses from the very beginning. I've purchased different guru programs that have added knowledge to my businesses both with flips, SFRs, and commercial properties. I've used Bigger Pockets and other free sites to gain knowledge as well. I'm also in an area that doesn't have a REIA club or few full time investors to lean on.

I attended a Fortune Builders event in August 2017, thinking if I could do nothing else, I could give out some business cards to newbie investors for future wholesale leads / deals. I listened to the speakers, reviewed the material, and made the decision to join the Fortune Builders Mastery program.  It was difficult parting with $35,000, but so far I've not regretted this decision.

I joined Fortune Builders for the systems and processes, which come from CT Homes LLC which was featured on Flip My House. They also aspire to the E-Myth mentality. Their support group is great, there are unlimited calls with coaches who are active in real estate and following the Fortune Builders disciplines, there are tons of documents and continuing workshops throughout the year with tons of networking opportunities. There are constant calls from the main office to make sure you are engaged and helping to determine what help you may need.

I'm hiring a temporary person to come into our office to help implement the systems and document the processes for our company to follow. My businesses have lacked appropriate structure.  This has limited my profits and has left me involved in the details on almost every aspect of my businesses. I honestly believe that I can double to triple my profits next year if I can implement these systems in our business. Also, I plan to structure my business to run on autopilot once all of the systems and processes are implemented and the bugs are flushed out.

I would not recommend Fortune Builders or any other programs if you don't believe, embrace and implement the material. I just thought I would share my experience. I wish that I had joined years previously.  

@Michael Johnston.

Welcome.

As a fellow WV investor, I understand your concerns about investing in WV with our declining population. I've also considered investing outside of the state and may do so next year. 

I rehab and resell single family properties in the Charleston and Huntington areas, and I own SFR and MFR units. I feel it is more difficult finding WV properties in good resell areas than other areas in the country. I joke with my business partner that if we can scratch out a living in WV, we could prosper in other areas of country with good systems.

I'm not of the opinion that southern WV will turn around anytime soon and show growth opportunities. The population decline started in the 1950's and continues today. @Amad Osman mentions the drug epidemic. It has grown exponentially since I started investing. Because of the drug epidemic finding quality tenants has become much more difficult in the last 2 years especially for the lower priced properties. 

I unfortunately took the advice of a mentor and purchased a lot of inexpensive rental properties in declining neighborhoods during my first year. These neighborhoods are the ones with vacant, boarded up homes. I still have most of them today, and they have not provided the cash flow that I had anticipated. We instituted some new management processes and tools recently, and are starting to see some positive results. I still have the problem of an exit strategy. It will be difficult to sell these to another investor when it comes time to exit.    

I would advise you to determine your investing niche and decide if it could work in the neighborhoods of the Charleston market.   

Best of luck.

I have 6 storage facilities ranging from 42 to 468 storage units. I probably have about a 60% climate to 40% non-climate unit ratio across the facilities. Of the two largest facilities that I turned over to the storage management company, the first I had built from the ground up and the second was an old wholesale furniture showroom conversion to climate control storage.

Three of the remaining facilities (195 units total) are managed out of my main office and are no more than 1 mile from the office. Two were purchases and the other was a conversion to climate control. The conversion was actually 12,000 square feet of warehouse space in the back of my office building. Those together throw off about $16,000 in gross income a month. I plan to add another 250 units with these 3 facilities and then turn it over to the storage management company. The management company can perform a better job with better tools than a small company like ours. It also gives you the freedom to pursue other interests including finding additional deals because you don't have to deal with the day to day management.

The last facility (117 units) is 45 minutes from office. It also has a car wash and other commercial properties. I have an onsite person who collects rents but we handle the bookkeeping back at the main office. 

If you have just a standalone 80 unit building and doing all of your marketing, renting of units, etc online, then I would find someone local to clean out the units and keep an eye on the buildings. If you have closer to 150 units and can move a trailer or double wide onto the property, you could give free rent to a person or family in exchange for doing the onsite things for you. 

If you consider running everything remotely and have 150 or more units at multiple locations, you could go with the model used by Storage Express out of Bloomington IN. They have close to 100 facilities in the Midwest with no onsite management. They use call centers, onsite kiosks, online rental software, and live phone support to rent units. They have maintenance people who travel around to each of the facilities to clean units and check on the facility.

I personally would not consider hiring a property management company to oversee and a run a storage facility. The businesses are too much different in my opinion.  

A self storage management company can take care of all those responsibilities you mention. Last week I turned over the management of two of my facilities to a storage management company which assumed my employees.

They take care of everything including paying all bills, renting units both online and onsite, cleaning and maintenance, etc. for a 6 percent management fee. 

This allows me to focus on accusations and new development. This only makes sense though if you have a facility with $13,000 a month in gross potential income.

On the surface it sounds like you will be ok. The end that I have my trucks go down has a 24% grade and with a 30 foot turn radius on a 10% grade at the bottom.

However I would pose this question to your site engineer.  I would provide them measurements of the largest trucks you intend to allow through this area. These measurements should include not only length of vehicle, but also length of wheel base, length from back axel to rear tongue, height of bottom of deck with a full load, etc.

Your back end of the truck is usually where you will scrap, but I have seen situations where a truck will scrap underneath when going over a hump.  

@Rick Freeland it is funny that you posted this. Just yesterday I had a 26 foot UHaul get stuck on the concrete driveway at one of my facilities, because the grade approved by my engineer was too steep.

I have a 20' by 110' two story building with the upper level being 10' higher than the lower level. There is a roadway that completely encircles the building. At one end of the 20' wide building, the drop is 9.5' stretched over 35'. The other end drops 10' over just 25' and it has a sharp curve with drop inlet at the bottom. Large trucks bottom out near the drop inlet.

If your drop is 10' over 65' you should have no trouble. However make sure you have a wide turn radius with a slight slope around the building and don't put a drop inlet near the bottom.

I've used both banks for investing purposes including flips.