All Forum Posts by: Shanti S.

Hi Tom I hear ya I'm in MA myself - and I'd also lean you to option 2. There are still a lot of great deals out there though it seems to me the bottom for MA was last year and investment properties have come a long way back up.

If you don't have the time or inclination to start marketing to motivated sellers and sifting through the results and negotiating, you may still be able to get a great deal on an REO or a wholesale deal - buy from someone who has done that work to get a property under contract at a great price, then just pay them for that piece of the work.

I'd also vote to stay away from Condos - I personally don't like the control you give up over your property, especially in terms of the condo fee

Best bet may be to pick up an 'ugly' SFR for yourself, keep for at least a year, preferably two, and fix it up pretty for a flip. In the meantime you can continue to search for income properties in working class areas

Best of luck to you and welcome to BP

True - and funny how nobody really seemed to expect that. When the recession hit, the REI world was saying it would be a huge boon to landlords, since all those foreclosed homeowners would now become renters. Nobody counted on all the people economizing by moving back home or finding roomates and housemates, related or not.

Yeah, I had one multifamily REO last year, longtime deadbeat tenant holed up in one of the apts and was working with a lawyer, demanding a large amount of cash to move out and even see the 1st floor apt and basement in the first place.

He was in, he had his rights and was lawyered up, and the bank didn't want to deal with him or consider eviction.

Glad you got a story anyway :-) There is a lot of good reading on here - you don't mention what state you're from...

If you're convinced you want to do the management yourself but don't know much about it you might talk to a local landlord association, REIA group, or even an attorney for a quick consultation on some key points of where you might really be exposed, being a newbie.

It's not rocket science, but you don't want to get on the wrong side of a tenant who knows much more about their tenant rights in your state than you do!

one - thank you for your service

two - seems like a very lofty goal without much specificity. Your profile quote seems quite relevant! If you're skilled in web design, you may find a market for bartering some design or SEO advice or marketing help in exchange for some mentoring from site members. For instance, some of us could probably use basic help with our websites or developing squeeze pages - you can specialize in REI flavors. Or just work under the table and put the $ into investing and marketing for yourself.

three - I don't think you're going to fill a niche that BP doesn't, or improve on it, without fully digesting the entire content and the content of any competition - really doing your research! It's a great site and the price to advice ratio can't be beat. I think your intro got a nicer response here than if you walked into most businesses and asked the owner, "how could I proceed to beat you at your own game?" :-)

Welcome and good luck!

I had to bail out early as well, being on the East coast, but I enjoyed the format and the ability to have sidebars with individuals.

Thoughts on the first time using it -
would have been more readable if the moderators had different font colors, or if each comment was shaded slightly different. The main room seemed to just melt into one big flowing mass of text - hard to pick up where you left off if you'd been having a sidebar conversation.

I was confused by people logging out and back in right away - and then it happened to me as I tried to visit the regular site for a second in another window and somehow the chat windows disappeared. May have been my fault entirely - I'm getting used to my first Mac here and trying several browsers so I'll have to see what I like best. I was using firefox last night.

Oh and the fullscreen was much better than the tiny window it started out in.

Will, Josh, et al - thanks for another great addition and for your time!

+1 on the buy used - I haven't had a car payment for 20 years, I generally buy from $3-10k, drive for a few years, and resell.

Insurance is cheap when you own it and it's a few years old, less sales tax and excise tax, and you're not worried about parking lot scratches and bumps.

On the other hand, I have tools and am used to working on cars, so I don't care about a warranty - some people really seem to need one for peace of mind.

But seems to me most repairs at an honest mechanic will only cost you what a car payment or two would, and would only happen once a year....

Your Excel entry example makes perfect sense to me as an outsourcing option.

I think we should outsource the time consuming intellectual / electronic / virtual work and free ourselves up to innovate, create, and do what we're good at or love to do.

I think we should insource premier talent, R&D, manufacturing, farming.... things that require serious talent and/or serious shipping costs, or relate to national security and well-being (energy, farming)

If we cultivate a reputation as a source of innovation, top-notch talent at top-notch salaries, and high quality manufactured products that we stand behind - I think the U.S. can remain strong into the forseeable future.

If we continue to not look beyond the bottom line in business - we're doomed - we can't hope to compete with China, India, Brazil...

My take is that real properties will continue to be worth more and more US dollars (with the all-real-estate-is-local caveat thrown in of course), since the materials that make them up and the labor that builds them will just cost more and more dollars. People have to live somewhere, and if they can't afford to build new, they'll have to buy used or rent. Wish I knew what would happen to land values!

But if gas goes to $4, $5 a gallon or more in the future, I'd see people clustering more near the cities to avoid costly commutes - driving those land and rent prices further up.

The dollar is going down, has been going down, and will continue to go down. Statistics about inflation, unemployment, etc are manipulated (reported artificially low) like crazy (as are gold and oil prices) so people don't panic and pull their $ out of the stock market and stop buying crap they don't need.

Do you really think a dollar today is the same as it was yesterday, or last year? What did you pay for a gallon of milk, a length of copper plumbing pipe, a roll of electrical wire, or a box of ammunition last year, or a few years ago? Computers and t-shirts might be cheap at BJ's, but the stuff that really matters is going up like a Himalayan mountain.

If you believe the dollar is losing value and will continue to do so, what can you do? Suprisingly, one of the best moves you can make is to get into as much debt as possible - as long as it's good debt.

Good debt - Buy income producing property at today's low fixed rates, then let your tenants pay off your mortgages with the devalued dollars of the future....

Yeah, I'm being basically doom and gloom but with some basic financial education and keeping your eyes and mind open there is still much success to be made no matter what happens to the U.S. of A and its economy. Just don't be a sheep with CNN as your source of reality :-)