All Forum Posts by: Victoria Pham

@Garrett Culpepper, it's good to know that you already have a primary residence. As long as you have a good credit score and a bit of good asset, I know at least two people who do hard money lending for you. If you're interested, DM me. I've been working with those lenders for my investors and they're very reliable

@Justin Thorpe, I agree with you that the stock market is not everything and it's not the single indicator of an economy, but more or less, it does say something about the health of the economy. There are stocks (tech stocks) are doing very well and there are stocks (Industrials - airlines...) are not performing great. But on average, the trend is looking forward, or businesses are getting better. When businesses are doing better, employment rate, or services indexes will be likely to go up. Therefore, mom and pop stores, employees in restaurants and many other minors, who are likely the tenants will benefit from it. 

Talking about macro economics, there are many different schools of thoughts and I respect your point when you say you don't believe it's recovering. As an optimist, I think the recession is behind us and the economy is getting better. But how quick the economy recovers remains to be unseen. You can see what CBS expert says about the recovery: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wall-street-recover-coronavirus/

Regarding to housing market. Please read the report by National Association of Home Builders (Wells Fargo Housing Index). As an investor and a financial expert, you know that when a new house is built, dozens of small firms are involved, so this report is very important to gauge the housing market. In Jun 20, NAHB Chairman Dean Mon in a report said that “Inventory is tight, mortgage applications are increasing, interest rates are low and confidence is rising. And buyer traffic more than doubled in one month even as builders report growing online and phone inquiries stemming from the outbreak.”

See the source here: 

https://www.nahb.org/News-and-Economics/Industry-News/Press-Releases/2020/06/Builder-Confidence-Surges-in-June-as-Housing-Rebound-is-Underway

Justin, I think you made a point and I agree with you that this time is challenging for a lot of people including investors. The future is not there to hold. I don't know what will happen and so do others. My prediction about the recovery could be wrong but it could also be true. We'll have to wait and see. Hope you enjoy reading the report and have more confidence in the housing market in particular and the economy in general


 

@Kevin M., I appreciate your time as well. But here is the thing. When you claim that my post has "a built-in selfish tendency to encourage people to buy real estate.", you should back it up with a good reason. If I'm "selfish" like you say, I will not spend 2 hours doing a thorough research and post my thought on Bigger Pocket where everyone is an expert in real estate investment. An expert will not make a investment decision based on a random post in a random forum. You can agree or disagree with me on what I write. I respect that and will take any arguments you'll make if any points I make in my post don't make sense to you. But as a professional, You shouldn't make an assumption of my good intention and personality. I don't like to take things personally and I know you don't mean to make it difficult but be careful and mindful with what you say even though we don't know each other. 

Hi Sean, great to know you're ready for your first investment property! Do you know what criteria you're looking for? (areas, purchase price, arv...) and you know your strategy (buy & hold/ buy & sell)? If I know your strategy at a deeper level, I can definitely help you find some good deals. Good luck! I'm so excited for you to start your journey

Yesterday during the conversation with my investor, I was asked where I think the real estate market in Philly is going in this special time where people are afraid that the pandemic is going to kill their investment. 

This concern is legit, especially data and statistics of the economy and unemployment rate are not that great. However, my hypothesis is that COVID 19 WON'T END PHILLY'S REAL ESTATE BOOM. Our economy is still well-structured if anyone wants to compare this time to the Great Recession 2008. The acute pain may be still there but it will be temporary. I have three reasons going from big picture of the whole economy to smaller pieces of real estate investment:

1. The ECONOMY IS RECOVERING: I myself also invest in stocks and watch the movement every day. In a sense, stock market is like a thermometer of the economy. So, to say that the economy is recovering, I'm going to take the stats of the stock market to show you. If you look at the picture below, it was deep down in March and half part of April, which is also the time I sold one house in a good week (that's very rare to me). However, NASDAQ, SP500 and Down Jones are all gradually increasing their points. It's now almost the end of July and the stock market has been much better. You can see that NASDAQ even increased their points higher than the time before Covid in America boomed (Feb). I'm confident that the stock market is going to fluctuate like it has always been, but the overall trend is going up. The real estate market of course is different from the stock market but they are similar in the sense that they both highly depend on economy. If we can measure the health of the economy by stats in stocks, we can also rely on the stock market performance for predicting the real estate market and where it's going. Besides, as I said earlier, the pandemic is not the Great Recession 2008 where the economy was deeply and structurally impaired. It took years to recover because we had to fix every single thing. This time is temporary because the economy was well-structured, under control and had very good stats (stock market, unemployment rate...)

2. BRIGHT MLS REPORT for June 2020 showed POSITIVE sign of Philly real estate market. Buyers demand was strong. "June was the first month on record new pending home sales exceeded 10,000". The closing volume improved by a record of nearly 32% from last month, but it's still the slowest June in 9 years, which is understandable. The median sales price high on the strength of townhomes ($239.9K, 4.3% up). In a special case, Point Breeze townhomes closed at a median price of $383K, 25% up. The numbers show that buyers are coming back and ready to invest against Covid concerns.

3. WHY NOT INVESTING NOW? The rule of thumb in investing is that you shouldn't time the market and in reality, you almost can never time the market as investment sometimes is not about rationality; it could be a game where random variables appear all of a sudden. Tomorrow's dip may still be higher than today's pricing. I have a Mathematics & Economics degree and got 4.0 GPA at college, but I made terrible investment decisions before even when I programmed a deep learning algorithm using probability and statistics to predict the stock market. Sorry you investors, I have to tell you straight that as much I agree with you that we need to find the right time to invest, you can never know when is right. Instead, stick with your plan! Know what YOU WANT and buy low + sell high. That's it! A good investment decision includes a Good deal + Good time. You cannot control time but you can control the deal you choose. Be good at that and it's good enough. One thing to consider also is that SITTING ON THE MARKET ROBS YOU OF INCOME YIELD. If you're waiting for several months to invest, you could have finished a project and enjoyed a big fat profit from it. Warren Buffett, a legend investor said "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." 

I'm not writing this post to encourage you to invest without a thoughtful consideration. You brilliant investors are hungry for profit but also careful in every step you make. I respect that and encourage you to keep doing so. This post is share my personal thoughts on a common question I received from so many experienced and novice investors for the past few months.This is a very scary time but I think it's a momentary pause. I believe that the real estate market in general and in Philly will continue prospering. Good luck!

When the Covid first started, I was worried that investors and buyers might not buy houses for a long time. However, in my experience, real estate was slow in the month of April and first half of May. From Jun, my investors started coming back and buying a lot. They're now even booming and buying more. Not many people are concerned about Covid anymore. I read an article in Business Insider and they said by Jun 2020, The rich in America got $565B richer during the covid crisis. So yeah, unemployment rate is still high but there are people getting big bucks and want to spend/ invest. Also, at the end of the day, housing is necessary, like food and clothes, they need a place to stay no matter what. That's the big picture explaining some of the points in the report I guess. 

hey @Matthew Tierney, is this your first time buying investment property? If yes, it's gonna be a bit difficult to get hard money loan. However, if no, you'll have a much better chance. In either way, I know some people you can talk to. 

@Account Closed, I've been a real estate consultant for a while and analyzing deals or cashflow analysis is what I do everyday. However, I ALWAYS include tax, property management, insurance, vacancy, etc in the cashflow. If investors don't include those things, they're talking about revenue, not cashflow. But I agree with you that NY and NJ real estate are very expensive. I have a lot of investors from those states changing to their investment strategy to developing and affordable city like Philly. I highly encourage you to do more research in this market. Let me know how I can help!

Wow, 17. You've truly proved that talent doesn't wait for age. You'll get there!

You're looking for investment properties in Philly? Do you know the strategy you want to do(flip/rental) and the areas you're interested? Answer those questions first and then see what's the budget you're comfortable spending. Once you know for sure what you want, the next step is to build a network and build a team (contractor, lender, wholesaler, property manager....). And you'll go from there!

Hey @James Camp, let me know the type of contractor you're looking for and let me screen around my network for you if I find anyone who meets your requirement!