All Forum Posts by: Vince DeCrow

@Mark Webb Probably not to come as a surprise, but real estate investments are much less risky. Sure - investors in bitcoin may have been earning a significantly better return over the past year, but real estate has exponentially more proven years of proven investment performance. Have you thought about the idea of combining bitcoin's underlying technology and real estate investing. I just wrote a blog on this topic. 

The Low-Down on Real Estate ICOs

@Jerry Shen Check out ATLANT, it's a blockchain based real estate investment platform. I also wrote a block that relates to this topic. Feel free to share opinions!

The Low-Down on Real Estate ICOs

I posted a blog on this topic last week. Feel free to share opinions!

4 GOP Tax Proposals that Could Impact Commercial Real Estate Investors

@Account Closed I just posted a blog on this topic. Feel free to share opinions!

The Low-Down on Real Estate ICOs

Does anyone have any experience investing in marinas? If so, how did you get involved and what are the big operational differences from office and multifamily investing?

Alex J. I wrote a blog on this topic last weekend so its a few days out of day but should still be beneficial to those making sure they are prepared! https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/10360/68571-4-gop-tax-proposals-that-could-impact-commercial-real-estate -Vince

Originally posted by @Jimmy Murray:

@Vince DeCrow Very well said!

Thanks! What are your thoughts on private vs passive?

@Shane Albert Congrats on winning the deal! What suburb or town is it in? Are you able to tell if she and her son are doing a good job? A good way to find this out might be to interview the current tenants. Does she have another job or any conflicts of interest? For example, if she got an urgent maintenance request but couldn't take care of it until hours later because she was at a different job, then the management company would probably be the better way to go, assuming that the incremental cost wouldn't put you in the red. Another thing that would be important to find out is the incremental value that you would be getting from a real estate management company, such as 24/7 assurance. 

@Jimmy Murray For someone that has a day job and other responsibilities other than their real estate investments, I think passive is the clear choice. If the person is 100% dedicated to their properties and is able to make them their #1 priority, I think DIY is the way to go. However...this is tricky because if you are at the point of managing your real estate investments full time, would you be considered a DIY investor or a real estate professional?

In general, I think that if someone wanted to make a real estate investment and didn't necessarily have a passion for what they are investing in or the proper amount of time to manage the investment, then they would be better off making a passive investment that is managed by real estate professionals that live and breath it everyday. This scenario would likely provide the the highest probability for superior risk adjusted returns, in my opinion.

@Nizar Basma Considering that you will be starting out on a small scale and would likely not want to drop large amounts of money for this data, I included a few links below where you can get good market information for free. We use CoStar and Axio for our market data, which is very robust data, however it would be too costly to justify these sources unless you are investing on a large scale. 

• The Census Bureau could be a great source for you for all economic related fundamentals:  https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/atlan...
• Trulia will be good for school ratings: https://www.trulia.com/
  
• For real estate value and rent/income ratio's - the large commercial brokers do research on these types of things and have reports available online. Here is a link to JLL's research: http://www.us.jll.com/united-states/en-us/research
• To keep yourself up to date on whats happening in the markets you can subscribe to Biznow updates. https://www.bisnow.com/ . You can customize these emails based on city, type of news you want to receive, and how often you want to receive. This will be very beneficial in making sure you are up to date with trends that will affect your investments. 

Finding agents/brokers and property managers will come down to who you decide to trust. Maybe do some google searching or start a BiggerPockets forum asking for advice on who people feel to be the "best" in certain markets. You could then contact each recommendation to start to build a relationship and continue on from there with who you feel is the best for you and the particular market.

Something else to consider is that "do-it-yourself" real estate investing can be time consuming and cause many headaches, especially if you have a day job to tend to. Based on your real estate investing goal and the fact that you do have a day job, have you considered passive real estate investing with partners that manage the investments full-time so you don't have to? The perk of this is that you are leaving it up to experienced real estate operators while still get very comparable, if not better, cash-flows and returns without having to worry about spending the time and effort to make sure the investments perform. 

-Vince