With the advent of Ipads and the like, it's such an easy thing to walk through a rental, if you are the tenant, and shoot a video with all of the issues or damages.  This should be second nature for renters…..as soon as you rent the place, walk through and video EVERYTHING.  A picture or video is worth a 1,000 words.  You seem pretty bright…[Read more]

It's actually worked so well for us that we created a business model around it and now create shared housing around the metro atlanta area market.  We also have been taking in empty investor homes and doubling or tripling the net return by renting the rooms and furnishing the common areas as shared space.  It's an effort to rent/manage but the…[Read more]

Sure you can buy a house for a dollar……Detroit has plenty of them and wholesalers there buy them and flip them back out for fat profits.  Real estate is fun and there are tons of profitable strategies but P.T. Barnum once said "a sucker is born every minute" or words to that effect.  There is much to be learned just from reading through this…[Read more]

LOL – I think Jay and I speak the same language.  Even in these challenging times, there is plenty of money & wealth to be created in real estate.  it's all about finding the right niche and riding that wave.  I've found mine and am loving the returns….although it's much harder to turn a 3/2 into a 4/2 with 4 separate renters…but it…

No matter where you are in the world, why would you put that much into a property for so little return?? I'm with Freckle – you're paying for this advice?  I once invested a ton into an area that was a "sure" thing houses we were buying for $50k were headed to $250k shortly when a government facility was converted to mixed use.  It's been about 8…[Read more]

It's great that you are beginning to look at real estate investing at such a young age.  Just be very cautious with your borrowing and debt.  Very challenging times are ahead of us and what something is "worth" truly becomes what a cash buyer is willing to pay for it.  You don't want to be so leveraged that your house of cards comes crashing down.…[Read more]

Our general rule of thumb with cracking brick is to get an engineer to take a look if the cracks are through more than 3 bricks and doesn't follow the mortar lines.  Very slight cracking is pretty normal on a 20 year old brick home.  In the states, particularly my market in Atlanta, we had an issue with builders covered over building debris rather…[Read more]

Atlanta still has tons of deals but not a lot on the FMLS/MLS listing side of things unless you're looking at Clayton County & South Dekalb which the hedge funds have pretty much avoided, although lately, even they have started buying both of these areas.  The better buys will be found through wholesalers and -off-market deals.  Yes, the property…[Read more]

It's pretty basic….if you are thinking of a builder and your potential bank or lender says "we won't deal with them", that's a pretty huge warning to go elsewhere.  Here in the states we often have local building boards, I wonder if similar things exists over there?  I'd start by checking with some local real estate agents and see what kind of…[Read more]

It comes with the territory I guess.  I often get it as a triple wammy….I'm a life-long contractor so I always get calls for free advice on projects and most often, projects gone bad!  I love the client who had our bid originally, used it to get a lower bid from someone else and then calls us back in to straighten out what the first chap…[Read more]

Fort Myers is a great area.  You might want to check with econohomes and see if they are doing anything with foreigners.  I only know of one lender who does those kinds of loans and his group only works in AZ or Phoenix market.  You may want to try and find a local community bank.  The big name banks are awful to try and do business with.  Most of…[Read more]

This is an old string but Atlanta never really dried up.  Many have opinions as to which market is "best"  Vegas never made any sense to me and still doesn't but to each her own.  There are still great deals to be had IF and only IF you have a good team on the ground to work with.  Our model is different as we create shared housing and avoid the…[Read more]

Nigel is right, you have to have boots on the ground or you are wasting time & resources.  Combining your funds with groups active in specific markets is the way to go.  Atlanta has been what we call a "high& best" offer city for awhile now.  The REO listing agents play that game even if yours is the only offer.  Not long ago I went after a 25k…[Read more]

In some US inner-city market, like SW atlanta for instance, it's next to impossible to get a landlord policy for theft coverage.  It has been like that for several years…you can get vandalism coverage but not a true landlord policy.  It's probably the same in places like kansas city, memphis, st louis and the like, areas with high crime and a…[Read more]

It's great to share and learn from many of the writers here.  We each have something to contribute and hopefully something to learn….and earn.  Much of this is perspective and experience.  The hedge funds have no doubt pushed up values in the markets in which they operate.  In Atlanta, they have actually been over-paying at the foreclosure sales…[Read more]

Well put Jayman, in all my years in US investing, I've never heard of anyone buying an investment property in Detroit and doing well with it.  At the height of things in Atlanta, I had groups trying to get me to take my team to Detroit and I refused to do so.  I visited a couple of times and wasn't impressed.  The key to investing anywhere, at…[Read more]

Well put Jayman, in all my years in US investing, I've never heard of anyone buying an investment property in Detroit and doing well with it.  At the height of things in Atlanta, I had groups trying to get me to take my team to Detroit and I refused to do so.  I visited a couple of times and wasn't impressed.  The key to investing anywhere, at…[Read more]

I don't know values in your part of the world but a 6% yield really isn't bad for most people.  Most of our stuff does 10% to 20% but it's a different program with shared housing.  Most smaller investors are best served by buying something in their immediate are so they can keep an eye on it.  One of my friends did well for 30 some years just…[Read more]

Joel – nice reply, you obviously know your stuff.  I've spent several decades investing in the US and live here….if you have a good team, boots on the ground, you can still do very well here with 7% to 20% annual returns depending on who you are alligning with and what you are buying.  Avoid groups who are spread amongst too many cities…no one…[Read more]

I don't know the tax issues over in Australia but as a life long investor in the US,  I completely switched to renting rooms in a shared housing concept back in '09.  The headaches of renting to families in my market wasn't worth the paltry returns and eviction costs.  We partner with other investors to now buy off-market properties, fix them up…[Read more]