Stop hanging out with your deadbeat buddies who spend all day drinking, talking sports, and otherwise wasting away.

A buddy of mine once rushed into a deal that promised sky-high cash flow, but the sponsor’s experience was thinner than a shoestring in Times Square.

Your mention of using GRM as a first pass and then diving deeper into cap rates and IRR is exactly how I’ve seen some of the sharpest investors I know operate.I had a buddy in Chicago who bought a four-unit last year in Pilsen.

You need to get some perspective buddy, unless you are trying to hide something.

My buddy learned this the hard way when his mid-term tenant got reassigned with just a week’s notice..

I bought the land and my builder buddy is putting it up at cost we plan is to hold or maybe I buy him out.  

I remember visiting a buddy’s place in Austin years back..he had a similar setup over his detached garage and was convinced that adding a window unit and some carpet would let him count that space towards the home’s total square footage.

That kind of shoot-from-the-hip approach can be fun for a minute, but it usually ends up like my old buddy Rick’s first deal.. he bought a distressed fourplex in Tucson years back without a real plan, and while he eventually turned it into a solid monthly cash flow, he spent the first six months sleeping with one eye on the tenant ledger, praying the HVAC wouldn’t bail on him after a hot desert day.

Going from a $232K purchase to a $575K sale is no small feat, especially with a full excavation of the foundation and reframing involved.I’ve got a buddy who tried something similar outside San Diego last year.. he had to reinforce the entire property with a new slab and rebuild the interior layout from scratch.. definitely not for the faint of heart, but his final sale price turned heads in that local market.

As to the buddy I mentioned in Washington state it was the same scenario; he converted tax-free up to their standard deduction but above that he kept within the lowest tax bracket and paid the smallest amount of tax possible.Thank you @Basit Siddiqi for calling me out on this and giving me a chance to address my mistake; it's important people have the correct information.