Building A Real Estate Empire

I live in CA and had a home rented out in CO we had a property manager that took care of everything. Just sold it last year found out at the end the tenants didn't pay the water bill and such but I think it's definitely doable with a property manager. It'll be a cost but you can always deduct it at the end of the year.
 


I live in CA and had a home rented out in CO we had a property manager that took care of everything. Just sold it last year found out at the end the tenants didn't pay the water bill and such but I think it's definitely doable with a property manager. It'll be a cost but you can always deduct it at the end of the year.

In my limited experiences in real estate semi-retired/"twilight years" former managerial professionals make superb property managers.
 
Right now on the verge of $10k/mo at 100% occupancy.

Total of 10 properties in the pool (15 total units). There is something like 10 properties on our list to look at once we get the next property refinanced. Margins continue to do quite well overall.
 
Haven't updated in a while.

Finally have the ball rolling on a property blog - The results of 8+ years of research & hard work - I'm gonna attmept to do leadgen on the site for the next year before we roll out something that's monetized. In the mean time I'm planning on blogging about the properties we're buying, how we're meeting our goals and various deals. Really think it'd be cool to bring out a video series from start to finish of a property flip or rental rehab like we've been doing.

At 17 units so far. End of year was pretty slow as the banks are immensely slow, so we've started to talk to other banks. One's pretty serious about giving me a nicer loan based on the properties we already have for cash.

17 units, 14 are rented out (Two units are in a duplex that had a water line break, once the break is fixed I can get it rented out finally).

According to my books I've increased the investment we got last year by almost 75%. Granted these are *my numbers* based on what I think the prices come in at. We did have 4 separate appraisals near the end of this year and they came in at 92.9% of where my values came in at, so if my numbers are within 8% we're still near doubling in terms of value ($388.5k in investment funds, portfolio is worth $805k with $135k in outstanding loans).
 
My grandpa worked at the coshocton AEP plant back in the 50s and 60s, my mom's family lived there for quite some time.

There are many anti-landlord states and MD is one of them. Ohio is still awesome, I can get an eviction processed in under a month, and very rarely do tenants ever win eviction suits.

I'm really excited about where we're going, the bank I talked to already warned me not too buy too many in an area that could cause an issue if I decided to sell all the houses at one time. I don't know if that means they think I'm gonna loan a few million in houses a year or what.


Really hoping we can scale this good, I've got 2 guys working for me full time, one was the foreman at a contracting firm and he swears he can hire a half dozen quality guys if I need them. I really want to improve our cash position as I've got a fantastic opportunity to buy a 35 unit apartment complex in a very good neighborhood that also comes with a house, duplex and commercial/retail building. $20k/mo in revenues for $750k.

Small world. I worked for AEP back in the early 90's. Spent about a 6-7 months @ the Coshockton plant, putting in water sampling wells.
 
It's always fascinating how people with decent incomes out there don't have the credit to buy a house but can pay 25% - 50%+ above the mortgage in rent. $50k truck in the driveway of a $15k single wide they rent. Priorities.

This is how everything runs in the midwest.

So few people can get financing even if they have the income that you can buy houses cheap as fuck and rent them for way more than you should.

Combine this with an unlimited supply of bank repos and not that many investors.
 
This is how everything runs in the midwest.

So few people can get financing even if they have the income that you can buy houses cheap as fuck and rent them for way more than you should.

Combine this with an unlimited supply of bank repos and not that many investors.

It's this really weird perfect storm for people who are willing to get in the game.

Problem is for people wanting to get into it is that banks just won't lend. I continue to have problems with our lender. We have $800k of real estate (And they agree, the value we have on the properties is reasonably correct). Right now we've loaned out $135k on the properties with $25k of it being temporary finance (Line of credit) which we'll pay off. So, we've got $110k/$800k loaned or 13.75% loan to value. The NORM is 70% or so for commercial properties. Eventually they'll warm up to lending (Along with everyone else) and we can loan 60%-70% on the properties, but for now they continue to be slow.

We ended last year at roughly 9.7% net profit based on what was invested into the company. Might not sound too impressive but we had $388k invested that now has $800k worth of property, and this year we should go from 9.7% to around 20% net even if we don't loan a single penny.

It's aggravating because there's 15-20 properties I see on the market this second that would make 15% or higher cash returns without leverage. With leverage, even 50% it would boost that cash return to 25%-30% or so depending on the property.
 
Do you run into issues with the credit score being low from soft credit checks temporarily lowering it? An old real estate agent taught me how to remove those, wasn't sure if it was still necessary at your level.
 
Do you run into issues with the credit score being low from soft credit checks temporarily lowering it? An old real estate agent taught me how to remove those, wasn't sure if it was still necessary at your level.

I've had a half dozen or so done this year and from what I can tell it's only changed my score about 1 point on any given report. If 1 point makes that much of a difference you're doing it wrong.
 
You'll get loans in time. It took me 2-3 years. I used a hard money lender to loan on my first 100 or so houses.

Try credit unions. They are usually more flexible.
 
You'll get loans in time. It took me 2-3 years. I used a hard money lender to loan on my first 100 or so houses.

Try credit unions. They are usually more flexible.

With those 100 properties, were you flipping or renting?

We've talked to a HM lender who will lend us 60% LTV @ 10% + 4pts for a 3 year loan period. VERY expensive money, but it would let us lever.

We're kind of thinking it might break for us this month with our taxes being done and showing $10k+ revenue this month. I rented out #17 today for $950/mo on a property we'll have $35k in. Good stuff.
 
Still here, not a whole lot of interesting stuff has happened except I've added a few more properties, the market is going crazy, and we're working on flipping a house right now.

It's insane to me to see how much opportunity there is (Just in my area, there's likely 30 good deals that I've found) and no one wants them. Seemingly no one wants the 'headache' of dealing with properties in a area that is considered bad or iffy.

For instance one guy decided to get out of the property game and wants to liquidate 4 single-family houses for a princely sum of $60,000 total.

Each property brings in $500/mo and a few have had long-term tenants on section 8 (Subsidized government housing).

So, 4x * $500 = $2,000/mo in revenues
4 * $125 for taxes and insurance = $500/mo
4 * $100 for ongoing upkeep = $400/mo

Net rough cashflow of $1100/mo or $13,200 per year.

Based on a investment of $60,000 that would provide an effective 22% APY return, and that's based on CASH investment. If you could obtain the mythical leverage/mortgages to loan it, the rate doubles or triples.

$1100 net cashflow minus a mortgage of $60,000 would provide about $8,250/year in free cashflow and this is with no out of pocket investment.
 
In UK if you invest intelligently than you can have a mortgage that is less than the rent that you get back.
My friend bought a house in UK whose Mortgage was 350 pounds and monthly rent from the property is 400 pounds :)