All Forum Posts by: Zach DeRossette

Others in the thread have given you good advice on how to pick a market. Once you pick the market, you will still need to get past the fear and take action. I'm just starting out on my real estate investing journey, but I help people deal with fear all day long at my day job coaching people changing careers. One activity that seems to really help is called fear setting. You can check out the details here: https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_...

In summary, rather than writing your goals down, you write your fears down. You create 3 columns. 

1. Define the fear.

2. How can you prevent the fear from becoming a reality?

3. If the fear does become a reality, how do you get back on track.

Example:

1. I am scared that I will not be able to collect as much rent as I planned.

2. I can get multiple opinions on the rent. I can ask my real estate agent and speak to several property managers in the area to get an accurate estimation of rent. After the house is under contract I can post the deal on the BP forums and get other peoples' insight into rental estimations. 

3. I can raise the rent next year or take the lessons I learned on this deal and apply it to the next deal. 

Hope that helps

Foundation is sinking which is causing the bricks to crack. 

We talked about this option, but the repair is too expensive to cover in closing cost credits. I prefer that the option of the seller fixing the problem rather than offering a reduced purchase price, because the repair cost is about 8-10k. I'm putting 20% down, so an extra 10k in cash would be using too much cash that I could be using for a future downpayment on another property. With interest rates so low, knocking 10k off the purchase price doesn't improve my cash flow by a huge amount.

And I agree the big concern is that the work won't be completed properly. We will verify the work with another company before COE.

Thanks everyone. We ended up having it inspected and the seller has agreed to fix it before COE. 

no sign of bowing or shifting in the basement. There are no windows down there either.

I am in contract on a house and the inspection report revealed some cracking on the brick siding. The inspector suggested to get a structural engineer to check it out. I'm debating whether it's worth it to spend $550 for a Structural engineer to look at it or back out of the deal. I definitely won't proceed not knowing how big the issue is. I've already paid $300 for a home inspection, and I'm wondering if I should just keep investigating the issue or keep looking for a new house.

The house is in East Point, Ga. It's about $130k and expected Cash on Cash return is about 8%. Other than this issue, the house is in decent shape and I like the area. 

I am looking for a good property management company for a SFH in East Point, Georgia. I live across the country so it's really important to me to find a company that will take good care of the property. Any recommendations would be appreciated!