All Forum Posts by: William C.

What exactly are you afraid of? Fear is the only thing holding you back. Are you afraid your renters stop paying you and now you can’t pay the mortgage so you end up losing your primary residence? Can you cover the payments in the event your renters default? Only you can answer your own question. Most would say, YES, pull the equity if you can use it to leverage other properties and produce cash flow. What good is equity it’s just sitting there collecting dust?

I just saw your post about “avoiding cold calls”. To be honest, and it was probably said already, either learn to cold call, or find a new career. Simple as that, seriously. Even if someone handed you a list of 100 buyers who raised their hand and said “I want to buy a home”, you would need to cold call them to introduce yourself. No one, ever, in 10 years of being in the industry, has ever called me and told me they wanted to buy and sell, without myself contacting them at least once prior. So you need to call them. There is really no other way around it, until you’ve made so many cold calls and sold so many homes that now all your precious clients are telling everyone around them how great you are. Until then, become comfortable picking up the phone and calling people.

5 contacts a day won’t cut it, as you have learned from the past 6 months. You need to be making 100+ contacts a day. Yes, sounds like a lot. Pick up the phone, and you’ll start making contacts. I shouldn’t need to tell you where to find numbers to call, a quick google search will do that. You need to be calling expireds, FSBOs, old leads, your farm, your inner circle, you can buy lists or build them yourself. Zillow, Trulia, commission inc....it costs money to make money in this business. You can probably find or build a cheap list but I suggest you invest in yourself or find a new career. It’s a numbers game. The more people you talk to, the more people you find interested in buying and selling real estate. I honestly would NOT suggest you work with investors at this point. You for one don’t have the experience or market knowledge they need. And second I chased around way too many “investors” early on in my career who never actually purchase anything. Look up the big name real estate coaches like Mike Ferry, Tom ferry etc. Get some scripts. Pick up the phone and start making contacts. Otherwise you won’t last, homes do not get sold sitting in front of a computer. You need to be on the phone.

Too many “mights” and “Mays” for me. What WILL it rent for. I need to be certain about the numbers, when reading your post I feel a lot of uncertainty.

How long is this vacation? Can you move settlement to a day you’ll be in the area? Sounds like your first wholesale, my advice would be that you should be present for the first one, but I can’t speak for what is legal and what is not.

How much of the $2800 do you not receive when you occupy one of the units? Currently the income is $2800, but one of the tenants will new to move out for you to move in, so which unit will you occupy? And now what is the the monthly income? $1500 NET income is excellent to be honest, but you’ll soon find out you don’t have $1500 left over. There are expenses your not accounting for like Cap ex, maintenance and repairs, vacancy, management....or maybe you are. When everyone is saying they need more info, they mean they need ALL the info. What are the units, what are the incomes, what are the expenses??

I don’t do that, a guy joked about it on a podcast. I agree, it would be confusing. Which is why I make all my rents due on the first.

I doubled the rents on the 3 units in my first triplex. 1000 unit went to 2000, 600 unit went to 1200, and the 700 unit went to 1350. I keep reading your post and keep disagreeing with the assumptions your making. You need to stop telling yourself you “can’t” do something and ask yourself how. Do you have experience in this rental market? Is there a demand for housing? Or do units sit for months unrented? I knew going into my triplex deal that I’d get 10 applications the day I listed it. Know your market, and you’ll be confident the numbers are accurate.

How do you know raising the rent $200 would empty the place out? Also, I’m not sure who you are talking about when you say “ that’s not the way to start a relationship”.... are you talking about the relationship with your tenants? It sounds like you don’t want to upset a friend, by raising their rent. You can’t view Tenants as friends. Sure, treat them respectfully and fairly, but keeping rents below market, “to maintain a relationship” is not the way to run a business. Add value. Clean up the building. Add amenities. Paint the units. No one said you can walk in and raise rents day 1 for no other reason than to bring them up to market rates. But when you add value to the United the Tenants will thank you, or they will leave and other Tenants will be happy to pay it for them.

Can you pass through some of the expenses to the tenant, like trash? It too, seems high. Trash is less than $125/quarter in my area. Rerun the numbers, make sure they are accurate. And then re-evaluate. If the numbers tell you that it’s not a deal at the current asking price, then offer what price you need to buy it at, otherwise, it’s pass.