All Forum Posts by: Tim Bergstrom

@Mark S. (mega delay on this reply!) Yes, I have management for the "Diamond In the Rough" property. I have a great manager and they do a great job keeping everything running smoothly.

Also! This is the link to my first STR if anyone wants to check this out.

https://abnb.me/gzznT9FkeM

Hey BP!

So in my last post I said I would put a link to my second STR listing. So here it is! Been up and running for a few weeks now and going really well! I have over 75% occupancy for this month of June! I'm super happy with that being my first month for this listing.

Check out the listing here:

https://abnb.me/FNGuadO3HN

I’ll try to keep the progress updated.

Update:

So I first made this post about a year ago. Can't believe its been that long already!

But I'm about to put up my second STR listing and have some knowledge and experience with this now.

First off, for anyone who has never done this before just be informed and know that to do this at a high level and make your STR really stand out it takes a LOT of work. For my first STR I went the route of hiring an interior designer/staging company. And she was awesome! She was able to get tons of discounts at a lot of stores that I wouldn't have been able to. And on top of that, since that is what she does day in and day out she already knows what to look for and already has her own inventory and actually sold me some of her stuff for cost. And it looks great.

I also ended up using my graphic design background to make all the artwork that went on the walls. That also took time, but I was able to customize the look and color palette to the property.

Now, I'm about to get my second STR listing up here in a few days. This is a much smaller unit than my first one. (First unit is a full 3b/3.5b townhouse with a 2 car garage with a deck and second level patio, the second is a "hotel suite" style second level unit that consists of a bedroom, living room, kitchenette, bathroom and small patio). Since the second was so much smaller and since my budget for this one was a little more limited I decided to furnish and stage it myself. Man, I really should have hired Kim my interior designer to do this one too. That's how I learned just how much work it is to shop for, install, move, decorate and set up a space. I probably ended up spending about as much as I would have if I had just hired her in the first place and it took me probably twice as long as it would have her. But one hack that I did seem to save a lot of time was actually just searching for the things I needed on Amazon and started a free trial of Amazon prime to get the free 2-day shipping.

All in all, I'm really happy with the way both my listings are turning out, but if you either aren't super visually savy or have a lot of irons in the fire that need your attention like I do then I highly recommend finding a staging company or interior designer who can help you get discounts on furnishings and/or has their own inventory that they would be willing to sell to you from. Especially since most staging companies need to cycle out their inventory every so often.

If you ever need a place to stay while visiting Nashville get in touch with me!

Hey BP,

I just wanted to jump on here to try to connect with some new folks. I've been in the investing world and have about 2 years experience in and around all this, but just recently hung my Real Estate license with Scout Properties here in Nashville. With this new development (no pun intended) I would love to connect with some builders who might be looking to meet some new agents or bring in some fresh faces. 

So if you are, or know of a builder in town who would like to connect please get in touch with me. I'd love to hear from you!

And, if there is something I can help YOU with please let me know that as well! Hope to chat with you soon.

I'm going to make the assumption you have Uber there. So perhaps an alternative to having a car available is to provide them with a pre-paid Uber credit? Especially for a high-end service include enough for a couple of trips with an UberBlack? (UberBlack is their high-end/luxury car service if you're not familiar with that part of their service). Obviously you'd have to work that allowance/credit into your numbers to see if it would work or not. But that could be a nice incentive that caters to high end transporation while also eliminating the liability of renting a car.

But Turo I'm sure would also be a great option like @Mindy Jensen said. I've thought about doing that with my car.

Hey BP!

I'm wanting to get some work done at one of my properties to install an exterior staircase/patio along with a door on the second level as well as some eaves/siding/roofing work. I've been calling around, but per usual in Nashville right now everybody is slammed.

If anyone has a recommendation of a good licensed contractor who would be great for this project I'd love to talk to them!

Thanks so much!

@Brian Bandas I love this. Great work on being so calculated and knowing what our metrics are so far and digging to dial them in further. Clarity is SO key (as I, and we all should be, continually re-telling myself/ourselves). 

I've done some direct mail (also in Nashville like you), mostly to the Woodbine/37211 zip code and 37208 North Nashville zipcode. My response rate has been about a 2-3%. Letters in a hand written font in envelopes, with a hand written font address on the envelope. That being said, some of my other investor friends use a very straightforward "business" looking letter and have gotten good feedback from those respondents saying it felt very professional (not that mine didn't). I pulled my list from ListSource, but so does everybody else so I'm not super differentiated there. 

I'm also SUPER interested in running GoogleAdwords though. The Internet it seems to me is a vastly underused asset for marketing campaigns among real estate investors. Not that no one is doing it, it just seems a lot of investors go "old school" direct mail. Which makes sense since many of the owners are potentially also "old school."

But then again, I know other guys in town who are doing 10,000 pieces a month and crushing it.

Just out of curiosity, what are your criteria for what you're buying? I know you said you're looking for rehabs and tear downs, but where are you looking? What's your price cap/range? Are you buying cash? Would love to help you out/work with you if something pops up on my radar on my end that fits your criteria.

At the outset of my investing career and education I went to a seminar called "The Flipping Formula" that came through Nashville back in Dec of 2015. I ended up buying their one year education/membership package thing. Definitely learned on the back end that it was just a an up-sell machine. And even after going through their video training (which was not worth the $1000 I spent btw, I could have found all the same information for free on here or a number of different places) it seemed really fishy/scammy to me. Fortunately I went with my gut in holding off on actually buying anything from them. 

But I can definitely empathize with you @Jonathan Hammann. I will say their salesman knew what he was doing, and they almost got me. But they definitely use high pressure sales tactics to get you to open your wallet. And, in my experience, it seemed they target (dare I say "prey" on) people who are brand new/uneducated about real estate and are still in the "dreaming" phase of a better life.

All that to say, thank you for posting this. I too also saw that this post actually came up BEFORE their actual website in my search results (maybe because I'm already a member of BP now...). But at least the silver lining here is that your post will most likely get to a good number of people searching for this and discourage a lot of them from falling into their funnel. Sorry to hear about your frustrating experience and having your money all tied up. That sucks. But at least this post has turned something good out of it!

And if nothing else, @Craig Cornforth's comment speaks volumes. Good on you Craig!

Now, after all that, if anyone actually knows of LEGIT ways to get into Tax Lien investing I would love to hear more! I'm still super interested in all of that.