All Forum Posts by: Steve Carlos

Hi all, on the commercial side we definitely use GIS platforms to analyze and communicate a variety of market info. But if you're primarily working with excel and looking for fairly basic visualizations, you'd be surprised what you can do with Excel power pivot and power view; there have been some recent mapping enhancements made. Better yet, I like Tableau for making heat maps and dashboards, but unless you are creating custom boundaries (which is totally possible) you will be limited to working with standard geographic boundaries (zip, city, county, etc).

@Andrew Bukowski, welcome to BP! I am a fellow JLL'er out of the NYC office. I live in Montclair, currently focused on doing some reno on my own home / house hack, but also on the lookout for good investments (and strategies) in this area. Happy to help wherever I can.

Hi Jennifer,

I currently house hack in Montclair, and overall I'd say this looks like a decent deal (definitely much cheaper than I was able to get out here!). In addition to the above comments on refinancing, some thoughts from me:

- I noticed it's listed as a 4/2; I assume your plan is to market the office as the 3rd bedroom to get a nice bump in the rent. I think that could work well, I just suggest you double-check that you don't run into any problems, as I see this is the most critical assumption in your analysis. I'm not sure how Certificate's of Occupancy (COs) work in Morristown (maybe someone that owns there can chime in), but I would try to verify that you won't run into any problems renting as a 3bd. Also, check your comp set for rents to try and gauge how your 3rd bedroom compares to others; if most other places have a "full" 3 bedrooms with closets, it may / may not impact your rent.

- Besides that, regarding your cost projections: closing costs may be a bit high (depending on whether you are including pre-paids and such in that number) but overall I think it is a nice conservative estimate; lawn/snow removal: I think that is actually a good estimate if you are having a company do it, doesn't look like a huge property so should be ok; Insurance - I think $2k is again a safe estimate, hopefully a little cheaper!

- In terms of whether this specific property is a "good property for a first investment", it really depends on what your investment goals (and alternatives) are. That said, if your rent and financing assumptions are correct, this seems like a good way to get started with rentals in Morristown.

Hi Christie Duffy , my wife and I recently went through a similar search, and are now living in a Montclair two-family. Shoot me a PM and I'd be happy to connect and share any tips or insights that might be helpful. Definitely some good options out there, but it took us a while to narrow our search and we had to be patient to find the house that worked for us (and wasn't over priced as an investment).

@Paul Timmins, thanks for the info, good stuff! I just pulled up the REIA info and am putting the next meeting on my calendar.

Steve

Hi everyone, just wanted to take a moment and introduce myself. I've listened to the Podcast and read the forums for years, but am finally taking the time to become more actively involved! I work as a Corporate RE consultant out of NYC, and while I have plenty of academic RE knowledge, I am excited about putting it to work and learning plenty of real world lessons along the way!

My fiancee and I moved to NJ just a few weeks ago, and are looking to begin our RE portfolio by finding an owner occupied duplex in a decent neighborhood, happy to discuss with anyone that may have some advice! Likewise, if there is every anything I can help with, please do not hesitate to reach out, especially with things like financial models and communications materials; as you can imagine, my day job has made me fairly proficient at those!

I look forward to meeting and working with many of you!