All Forum Posts by: Vernon Emami

Hi Brandon, 

see about your local real estate investment meet-ups, these will be folks that you can network with.  put up your keywords for you area to ensure anyone discussing on your topic keyword, you can see what's happening and how the interactions are going.

the Podcasts and webinars, the books listed on this site are wonderful to really become familiar with trusting yourself to push forward.  Finding a mentor is great however you are in the site that will feed you awesome information all day long.

Thank you for the introductions...there is indeed a major difference going PRO.  The analysis calculators are addicting to use, i can see now how quickly deals can be pre-selected for further review.  

Hello Everyone,

I'm not necessarily new to BP however this will be my first introduction to the public in a forum, very long overdue, but i haven't been avoiding either.  Quite the opposite actually. i've been a fly on the wall, so to speak, and trying to take everything in this last year.

I thank everyone on this site for such amazing content, showing such willingness to help one another and having the data readily available so quickly and reliably!  I can honestly say that my approach to investing has improved as do my goals and methods to problem solving because of BiggerPockets and it's members, all of you!  I will be contributing and giving back yet I feel I'm still the wide eyed kid  fascinated by what i'm seeing and reading from you.  

I have so much i want to share and don't know where to start.  I have finsihed a project and was wanting to do a post write up but the PRO deal came up and got side tracked...This is a very important moment for me and i'm wondering how many others stayed up 4 hours trying to say hello to others, deleted their messages at least 8 times to where a small book would have been written by now!  it's 2:35 and i started this 9pm...

Seriously, BP is literally keeping me lifted!  thank you.  For the sake of not embarrassing myself further, i'll see you in the forums now

oops, sorry i meant Andrew.

Joe, you are also very correct!

Hi Joe,

Your head is in the right place to want rental property, but If you are serious about rental properties you might want to consider getting out of condos and researching / finding yourself a multifamily residence of some sort, perhaps starting out with a duplex. One aspect of a plex is that you will have multiple tenants helping pay down the mortgage, in some cases much faster than a single residence family. The better part of it is having rental checks coming in even if a tenant moves out and needs to be replaced. There are generally no HOA fees therefore most of your costs are fixed and known and you own the property outright, leveraging the full and value and property for leveraging against taxes, not the cube you would claim as a condo.

With Condos you will never have the control of how management handles maintenance fees or how well they will run the complex.  As a result you may be finding yourself not only paying higher dues for services not equivalent, but you may find yourself with fees similar to a moving target...in other words, your dues will increase over time and still not provide the services needed to ensure the property is properly maintained giving you a good value. so if you start out negative cashflow, it will deepen with each raise in fees.

It's always a tough call between doing the right thing and wanting to be helpful.  Having said that, the right thing to do here is manage your investment.  These tenants will give any reason but the right one to hold off payment as long as possible and in the end, living for free.  By taking action now, you will lesses any questions if this ever happens in the future with other tenants and you will regain your investment value add that much quicker.