All Forum Posts by: Yael Lederman

From my experience, spreading your risk out in as many ways as you can always pays off. That doesn't just mean buying several properties, but also means spreading your risk across different types of properties (single family, multi family, etc.) and different investment strategies (STR, LTR, flip, etc.). If you over-invest in STRs and people stop traveling, you have a problem. If you over-invest in flips but there's depreciation in your market, you have a problem. There's always balance with spreading out risk and making sure that you can manage your portfolio, but I'd definitely recommend thinking in that mindset.

You should be able to sign up through your local MLS site. All they need is 1. your license number (so they can verify that you're active with a brokerage) and 2. payment.

AirDNA and Mashvisor are good tools. Be careful not to fully trust their numbers. Nothing can replace doing your own research. But they are always a great place to start to get access to rental rates, occupancy rates, cap rate calculators, etc.

It really depends on why you're buying. Are you looking for a STR, LTR, flip? For my STRs I'm looking for properties that really stand out and will cash flow (look at AirDNA and Mashvisor for market metrics). Appreciation is nice upside but I don't necessarily optimize for it since I'm hoping to hold for a while. For LTR I tend to look for more desirable locations mostly because the risk of having to deal with problematic tenants and/or evictions is higher in less desirable locations. That can be a huge time and money suck so I avoid it. For flips I'm hyper vigilant about what other properties are going for in the area and how fast they are going to minimize my risk.

I've personally never done it but know many folks that have. Pros are pretty straightforward – you can take on the loan without having to qualify for a new one, you can avoid some closing costs, you can typically close quicker, and often get better terms. The cons are more important to understand but fall mostly on the seller. There are pretty significant legal and financial risks, especially for the seller if they maintain responsibility for the mortgage. It may be harder for them to obtain new financing too. Overall its a better deal for the buyer which is why @Paul De Luca is correct that its hard to get a seller onboard.

Agreed with the advice about house hacking. Another tip is to explore creative financing options. For example:

1. Seller financing: Negotiate with the seller to carry the financing for the property. This means the seller becomes your lender, and you make monthly payments directly to them.
2. Partnerships: Consider partnering with someone who has more capital or experience in real estate investing. You can pool your resources and share the profits.
3. Joint ventures: Collaborate with other investors to purchase a property together. This allows you to share the costs, risks, and potential profits.

@Malik Johnson Here's the approach I'd take: Look on the market and search for investor-friendly keywords like "income potential", "cash flow", "fixer upper" etc. Find the listing agent and contact them. Do that with a handful of folks and get to know them each by asking them good questions about things like market trends. If you have some time you can also monitor listing sites and see which investor-friendly properties are selling quickly and then be more targeted with which listing agents you approach.

Buildium is a great tool that can do most of what a landlord needs. They have tiers so a basic tier might work best for your needs. 

I'm not as familiar with Hubspot as I am with Salesforce, but for Salesforce there are tons of consultants out there that will build customized systems for you pretty quickly. I'm assuming the same exists for Hubspot (and it's probably cheaper). It will still cost more than doing it yourself but if you factor in the cost of your time and the cost savings from using the system to accelerate your business, it could be worth it. You can find these folks all over the place but the cheapest place is probably UpWork

I've asked this same question to investor friends and a big theme I've heard from folks is competition. Right now there's less competition than there was a few years ago.