All Forum Posts by: Zach DeRossette

Hi Ben,

I'm a Realtor in East Bay and also an out of state investor. Your approach of buying a fixer-upper and then selling or renting is a good idea. 

I personally invest in Atlanta, due to the purchase price being relatively low (compared to out here), the price-to-rent ratio, and future appreciation potential. 

I'd be happy to chat on the phone or zoom if you are interested in talking about either buying a home here or picking a city to invest in. Just send me a DM and we can set up a time.

Hi Andrew,

I'm a realtor in the bay area and I invest out of state. 

As far as getting started, it depends on your learning style. If you are okay taking online courses, I would just go ahead and sign up for one. All of the real estate schools use the same, publicly available information. They just have different ways to teach it. I used the CE shop. 

As far as brokerages, you have to join one as a new agent. The only way out of joining a brokerage is starting your own, but you can't do that until you have the credentials. The best thing to do is to call a couple realtors that work at each and ask them how they like it. I joined a newer/smaller brokerage because I wanted to work at the same brokerage as my mentor. Always ask about the commission split and support for new agents. Some people say the training at KW is great for new agents, others say it's underwhelming. 

It would be really hard to get started entirely on your own. You will need to join a team, find a mentor, or have some type of agreement with an experienced agent where they help you with your transactions. Sadly, the RE exam really only covers about 10% of the job. So much of it is learned on the job and not written down anywhere. 

Happy to chat more if you want, just send me a DM.

If possible, buy a SFH. SFH's appreciate faster and hold their value better in a downturn. I would also encourage you to think about house hacking. It doesn't have to be a multifamily home, I have a friend who rents a room in his house to help with the mortgage payment. This could be a way to increase your budget a little and help keep your costs low.

As others have said in this thread HOA's can be a problem, due to the fact they can increase their dues. In my opinion, this is not necessarily a deal breaker and you can review all of the HOA documents in the disclosure packets to get an idea of how the HOA is run.

While nobody can predict the future, I'm optimistic about the future appreciation in the Bay Area, including Alameda.  I think if you hold the house/condo for 5 years, you are very likely to get the benefits of appreciation. The bay area has appreciated, on average, 4-5%/yr over the past 30 years. I believe it will continue to do so despite some of the problems we are experiencing now.  

Hi Amit,

Welcome. I'm an investor from the Bay Area as well. I grew up in Cincinnati and considered that market before ultimately investing in Atlanta. I'm happy to chat more if you have any questions about the differences between ATL and Cincinnati. I'm less familiar with DFW.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for someone who can supply/install windows in Atlanta? I called around to a couple of companies and everyone was saying they need at least 8 weeks of lead time. Most places wouldn't give me a price over the phone, but I found one place that said they can do $495/window for double hung vinyl windows. 

Thanks everyone. The house is in a transitioning neighborhood, houses are being flipped, but there are still several houses with boarded up windows. I would say it's a C to C+ neighborhood. I ended up finding much cheaper 2" faux wood blinds from Walmart. I thought it was a nice compromise. I don't want to over-renovate, but also the windows are pretty old so I would like to cover them something nicer than vinyl blinds.

I am gathering the final list of materials for a renovation for a rental property in East Point, Ga. It's a SFH, and I'm hoping to rent it for about $1200-$1300/mo. The entire house needs blinds. I'm wondering if anyone has any input on what kind of blinds they put in their rental properties? Standard 1inch vinyl blinds or faux wood blinds? Any online retailers you recommend?

I'm also looking at ceiling fans. I don't want to spend more money than necessary, but I would also like to avoid cheap fans that look bad and break easily. Any suggestions here?

Thanks everyone, I was able to get back in contract and the seller made some concessions that I was happy with. I wasn't able to get an engineer out there in time, but I had a few people much more experienced than me take a look at it and made a conservative repair budget. 

@Thomas Geary I had never thought about a non-refundable DD check, but that sounds like a great tip to remember for future deals.

@Bjorn Ahlblad @Nathan Gesner @Brenden Mitchum

Thank you for the input everyone. My agent was able to get the regular inspector out quickly. the problem we run into is when we need someone like a structural engineer, everyone is booked up a couple weeks out. If you saw this on an inspection report, would you be worried? There is one stair step crack in the foundation. 

I am looking for a rental property (SFH) in the Atlanta area and most sellers want a very short due diligence period. In order to be competitive with my offers, I usually ask for a 4-5 DD period. I'm on the west coast, so I'm doing everything remotely. The problem I'm running into is if there is an issue in the inspection report, there is no time to get a specialist out to investigate the problems further. I was just in contract on a promising house, but the due diligence period expired before I could get someone out to look at the foundation which had a stair step crack. The previous house I was in contract fell through due to a foundation issue as well.

How do people handle this problem? The market is so competitive that someone else will take the house if I pass on it. I’m fine taking on some risks, but I know foundation issues can get extremely costly.