What would you recommend as training/resources to get started in real estate investing? I was thinking of getting a real estate dealer license as a way to get a better idea of how the system works and go from there, but any words of wisdom from someone already doing it successfully would be most welcome.
There's plenty of "real-estate investing" information online but most of it looks scammy as hell.
I wouldn't get a license. There are a number of reasons why but one of the keys is your level of responsibility goes up in the eyes of the legal system. So a simple mistake goes from being something minor to being much larger liability.
There are lots of classes you can go to. The first thing I'd do is talk to local real estate brokers and ask them about the market and how things are going. Then see if they can introduce you to another investor that is local. Local knowledge is pretty key for real estate. Also, check into local real estate investment groups, the good ones are pretty selective but if you can meet someone on it you might be able to tag along and get some "free" education until you are ready. This is actually how I started way back when.
Real estate is local, so I would be wary of any "system" that purports to be able to identify undervalued properties using a one-size-fits-all approach. I would not recommend buying a property that's far away from you.
As far as landlording a small number of properties, most of the knowledge involved is how to be handy, or knowing trustworthy people who are handy. One piece of advice I would offer here is to charge slightly below-market rent to get better tenants, especially if you're an amateur.
And something a lot of people misunderstand is the relationship between appreciation and cash flow. They're inversely related because lots of appreciation attracts more buyers who drive down rental margins by bidding up purchase prices. Rapidly appreciating properties in a place like Seattle may have lower cash flow than you would anticipate given the demand, and properties with very little appreciation in a state like Ohio may have much better cash flow. But as I said, you should buy a local property and just accept the market conditions. If you want to invest in real estate elsewhere just invest in a REIT.
Also, one bit of advice I have found true in most states (but NYC may be different). Avoid home owners associations (HOA), they are almost always the death of a successful venture. I have only one property left in an HOA and we have been trying to sell it for 2 years but the HOA is known as an activist HOA so selling in that neighborhood, even at a discount, is hard. HOA's make rentals really hard, make flipping hard and drive the costs of everything up. And most investors will tell you the place you make money in real estate is in the older neighborhoods which are established, free of HOA's and are either being revitalized or have been already.
Townhomes and Condo's are a little different because you will always have a board for those, and I have had some good luck with Condo's but in general I avoid anything where another entity besides the local city/county can dictate what I can or cannot do.
Kind of OT but I don’t understand why everyone with some spare time doesn’t get licensed for real estate to circumvent the cartel fees. It costs about $300 + the fees for the classes and 135 hours of time. But it can save you tens of thousands, gets you privileged access to listings, plugs you into the whole real estate ecosystem... it’s kind of a no brainer, as far as I can tell
Here's a couple of reasons why I don't want to do this:
1. 135 hours is a LOT of time to invest for even tens of thousands of dollars return. I could build and market a side project or two in that time, which could have potential for significantly higher return.
2. To recoup that return, I have to take a big risk, using a highly inexperienced agent (me) in a huge dollar transaction where everyone I speak with will have much more experience.
3. Worst decisioning -- if I am my own agent, I'm not in a good environment for optimal decision making.
There are other reasons outside the scope of your question (some people prefer lower touch investments), but those are a few.
Yea, to add one major point to that list, a real estate agent most states require you to house your license with a broker. And you cannot become a broker in most states until you have usually some period of time working for a broker. In my state you need 2 years under a licensed broker before you can apply to be a broker (there are some other things you can do to qualify too but it is still a lot of time). So in the end that means, you get your agent license (pretty easy <$1000 generally), work as an active agent in some fashion for 2 years before you can get your broker license and then, finally, you can eliminate 50% of the transaction fee.
The math just doesn't work out, if you get to the point you are doing that many deals, just hire a broker for your business.
Getting access to the MLS isn't that hard. And finding a good agent/broker to work with is very doable as they want to work with investors since it is a source of recurring income usually for them.
That all said, I am always interested in other peoples approach to minimize transaction fees, but most investors I know in real estate use this approach as it just works and minimizes liability.
Here is the simple reason. It is better to team up with or employ someone with the license then to hold it yourself. There are lots of legal obligations and other issues that trigger when you are a licensed agent. Not that you are trying to do anything illegal, but simple mistakes become much bigger issues when you are licensed. Also, when licensed you have a ton of disclosure rules you must follow and missing one can be a major issue, so better to employ someone or team up with them than to be licensed yourself.
I do agree in reference to fees from brokers etc, but if you do some deals you will find someone you can work with and honestly at that point they'll work with you on the fees and you won't care as much either because they'll take the liability so their fees are fair.
I have myself setup where no, I don't personally do any active work as a landlord. I get payments deposited into my account every month and I have some loan payments go out but outside of that I am not active month to month doing anything.
When things to break or need service (usually a few times a year something minor pops up), my involvement is approving a repair or calling on a company I have used prior to take care of it for me. I have service providers for each property that maintain it for small fees, so like lawn, pest, sprinkler, AC is all taken care of on preventative maintenance plans.
Yes, but only short term. For example, I only do rentals when I can make them cash flow positive monthly. But there are times when say, you need to replace a water heater and that requires a permit and licensed plumber, so say $600-$1200 in my area depending on the unit etc. So I might lose my cash flow positive side for the next few months to pay that back, but in the end the net/net of the unit will be cash flow positive.
I did have one home we sold at a loss because of the housing crash. It sucks, but it also taught me a number of valuable lessons, and really improved my game.
With real-estate, there is a cliche saying, you make the money when you buy the property not when you sell. This is so true. If you buy it right, you will do well, when you buy it wrong it will almost always bite you.
Flipping is an easier place to lose money if you aren't careful. But if you are flipping you aren't doing it for passive income. I do like flipping but it is not passive and in my area has been hard the last few years because of the local market trends.
Many people can outsource to management companies that handle this for you in exchange for a percentage. I've seen averages around 10%, with some outliers (PenFed credit union I believe?) doing 7%.
I actually set things up slightly different but essentially it follows the same process. I have service providers I negotiated and setup that manage different aspects for me, so most all I have to do is make an approval or call and I don't have to pay a percentage fee each month. I learned how to do this after I had a bunch of properties in the past and was paying 8-12%/month in fees for each property but all they were doing was making calls on my behalf or setting up service providers to do it. Once I figured that out, I setup all my own service providers once and cut out the management fee. There are even people that cover the stuff like evictions etc as a service so you don't have to be involved on it.
It requires maybe a few hours of my personal time every couple of months as an average.
Do you have any advice on finding service providers or contractors? It seems like it's mostly word of mouth but people with dependable providers/contractors don't want to lose them to other landlords or developers.
It is somewhat trial and error but a lot of it is based on recommendations. It took me 4-5 years before I found a handyman type that I trust to just take care of little things. But for other things I signed up with larger known brands. Like our AC maintenance contract is with one hour AC for all our units, this means they take care of preventative maintenance as well as fix things as needed at a reasonable rate.
Plumbing I found through trial and error, and to be fair for any job where I see a bigger repair bill, e.g. > $500 I'll generally get quotes to keep everyone honest. There are exceptions of course, but when I start seeing bigger repairs being requested it sends up some red flags because we maintain everything really tightly.
Our lawn service and our pest service are the same ones we have do all the units and our own home too. We found both of them through a referral and tried them at our home first. Then slowly gave them more.
I pay 7% and the property management takes care of renting out, collections, notices etc. They have a list of contractors to do work but I always seek out multiple bids.
This is usually my recommendation for anyone starting out too. It buys you time to learn and prevents simple mistakes that can cost you money. Once you have done it for a few years you'll have seen a lot of the basics and can start doing things differently. That is exactly what I did, started with a real estate company that did my rental management and then as I grew more comfortable and had built up my list of trusted people I stopped renewing with the agencies.
I actually found out that in many cases my background checks were catching stuff the rental agency did not which really pissed me off. I use the local sheriff's office to run the background for $20, and then credit check with an online company for $15. I get a true picture of the person/people this way, the rental agency wasn't doing a background check, it was only a want/warrant check and credit check. I prefer knowing the background of people and being able to deny for valid concerns, like the one I found out had been evicted from their last 3 places but lied on their application about prior evictions. The real estate company running my old checks would have never seen that since they just did a wants/warrants check, but I did and denied these people the rental for lying on the application about prior evictions. That said, I had a young family rent a house from me one time that had been evicted and gone bankrupt the prior year. They never lied to me, were honest as best I could tell, and upfront with me about everything so I rented to them after meeting with them. I only required them to provide a full months rent as security instead of a reduced amount, which they totally understood. Never had a problem with them and they got their security deposit back cause they took care of everything.
Email or text. I setup Twilio as my go between so I can receive and send texts (or calls) to renters without them having my personal number. There are a couple of long term renters who I have had for many years that have my personal cell, but most don't.
