@bmoreno23
Switched careers into this four months ago and I own zero doors. Phoenix. I have some equity in my house, a GC who actually answers the phone, and a hard money lender in Tempe willing to take a chance on a first timer. What I am hunting for is a rooming house or per-room rental where the license, the rent roll and the floor plan all say the same number. Has not happened yet.
The facts
Posts
Does anyone in Phoenix run rooming houses as multifamily or do they underwrite them separately
Asking because I'm looking at a property in the Maryvale area, eight rooms, owner calls it a rooming house but the city license says six, the rent roll says eight, and the floor pl…
Thread · 19 points
Four months in and I still do not fully know if he is wrong. I am sitting on a hard money commitment out of Tempe, a GC who picks up on the second ring, and roughly $60k in home eq…
Thread · 15 points
Trying to figure out if that doubles my startup time before I can collect a dollar. Looking at a 4 bed in Providence and the licensing office told me each room needs its own inspec…
Thread · 14 points
Does a HELOC actually work for a first flip or is hard money the only realistic option
I came into this thinking a HELOC was the smarter move because the rate is lower and you avoid points. I have about $60k in equity in my primary in Phoenix, which pencils to maybe …
Thread · 14 points
Is there a rule of thumb for how far out from a city limit a land bank parcel stops making sense?
I keep seeing acreage listings 8 to 15 miles outside a mid-size metro, around 180,000 people, growing maybe 2% a year. Prices range from $3,400 an acre at 8 miles to $1,100 an acre…
Thread · 10 points
Rent roll says one thing, license says another, the city file says neither
Career changing into this and I've spent four months looking. Found a 9 room house, asking 310k, seller says all 9 rented at 540, so 4,860 a month, 58,320 gross. I pulled what I c…
Thread · 17 points
1,600 miles from the only houses I can afford
I left a warehouse job in March and I have 34k saved. Nothing near me trades under 400k, so every house I can actually buy is in two midwest metros I've never been to, where 3/2 ho…
Thread · 30 points
Fourteen months of distributions from 25k, and one loan that scared me
I came into this from a completely different line of work and had no chance of buying a property with what I had saved. 25k, no local market knowledge, no time to renovate anything…
Thread · 14 points
Buy the worst house on a good street, or a mid house on a great street?
I've been looking at live-in flip candidates for about two months and the two shortlists I keep making are completely different houses. One is the tired 1960s ranch on a street wh…
Thread · 32 points
12,000 names on one side, 40 buyers who have actually closed on the other
Two people have offered to handle dispo for me when I get something under contract, and I have no way to tell which offer is worth more. The first sends a monthly email to a list …
Thread · 30 points
My old boss's mother rented to the same voucher tenant for fourteen years
I left a job in logistics eight months ago to figure out how to do this and I've been collecting stories from anybody who'll talk to me. My old boss found out what I was up to and …
Thread · 22 points
Three dead deals with an agent who buys for his own account
Signed a 9 month exclusive buyer rep last spring with an agent who marketed himself as investor-focused, which he genuinely was. He also runs a flip business, which I knew and didn…
Thread · 36 points
Starting from zero in a market with 30 photographers: go narrow on 3D or offer everything
I've got about $9,000 to put into equipment and I've been sitting on the same fork for three weeks. Version one, narrow. Buy the 3D capture system plus a subscription, learn to sc…
Thread · 14 points
3k total. Is three deals at 1k diversification or just three ways to lose small amounts
I've got 3k I can commit and no property, no experience, and a lot of tabs open, so this is my first move of any kind. What I've found: one platform will let me into a pooled fund…
Thread · 24 points
Does buying one defaulted mortgage in my own name make me a debt collector?
I'm coming into this from a completely different career and I've hit a wall on the licensing side. Everything I read about non-performing notes talks about workouts and foreclosure…
Thread · 28 points
Quoted twelve agents at $225 flat and four said yes. Price or package?
Six weeks into taking paid work. Gear is bought and paid for, about $4,300 all in for a body, two lenses, a flash setup, and a tripod, plus $99 a month for editing software and clo…
Thread · 15 points
Anti-piecemealing language in the ordinance ate my four-lots-a-year plan
36 acres, county ordinance exempts a division of four or fewer lots from the major subdivision requirements, meaning no engineered road to county standard, no stormwater plan, no p…
Thread · 37 points
Nobody I called cared that the office was 45% below replacement cost
28,000 sf suburban office, three stories, 61% leased, built 1987. Seller was a family LLC that had owned it free and clear since the 90s and had stopped answering the leasing broke…
Thread · 23 points
Automated title search vendors: is the examiner the product or the bottleneck?
I came into this from a completely different industry and one of the first things I noticed is how much of a title search is pattern matching against recorded documents. Which is e…
Thread · 31 points
The ARV only works if an appraiser counts 450 unpermitted square feet
Deal I'm modeling as a career changer, so tell me where I'm wrong. Tax card says 1,450 square feet. Tape says roughly 1,900, because at some point somebody finished a rear addition…
Thread · 38 points
Same market, two parks: 6.5 percent cap on city utilities or 8.75 on a private water plant
Two parks came across the same week from two brokers, twenty minutes apart in the same county. I'm nowhere near buying either, I'm trying to understand the spread. Park A, 52 lots…
Thread · 38 points
First probate letter drafted and I think it sounds like a robot
I pulled 40 filings from my county's probate court records last week, the ones where real property showed up in the inventory, and I've got names and mailing addresses for the pers…
Thread · 32 points
Two funder term sheets, same fee, completely different failure clause
I've got two transactional funding quotes on a double close scheduled for next Thursday and I can't separate them on price, so I'm trying to separate them on what happens when it b…
Thread · 27 points
Knock on the door or just hand over the address? The fee seems to depend on it.
Coming into this with no portfolio and no license, so all I have to sell is the finding. Two people I have talked to run it completely differently and both are getting paid. The f…
Thread · 19 points
If nothing happens on the land, why do people say you still have to go look at it?
Coming from zero here. The appeal of land banking to me was that there's no tenant, no roof, no calls at 11pm. You buy it and you wait. Then I read a post where someone found out a…
Thread · 32 points
Started from zero six weeks ago and I don't understand what I actually own
I opened a brokerage account, put 2,000 into a REIT index fund because a book told me it was the easiest way to start in real estate, and now I'm looking at the holdings list and I…
Thread · 26 points
Is it the 55-plus label people pay for, or the pool and the programming?
I've toured four age-restricted rental communities in the last month, which for someone who was selling insurance a year ago is a lot of clubhouses. Two of them were amenity heavy…
Thread · 38 points
Would you rather buy the park with a season or the park with a highway?
I'm starting from zero and reading listings I can't buy yet, and the two that keep showing up in my saved list are opposites, so I want to know how the room splits. One is a 34 si…
Thread · 33 points
First list pulled and I'm already stuck on what to do with it
I pulled my first list this week and I'm sitting on it instead of using it, which I suspect is the actual problem. One county, single family, 3 bed or more. Filters I stacked: own…
Thread · 23 points
The assignment clause in my first JV agreement reads backwards
I've got a two page JV agreement from a wholesaler who's been doing this eleven years in my market. Deal is a duplex, both sides vacant, seller inherited it and lives four states a…
Thread · 26 points
The 3x income rule is running closer to 3.5x in Phoenix right now because rents jumped faster than underwriting habits did. What's your eviction filing rate looking like after you…
Reply · 2 points
Does anyone actually come out ahead on an OZ deal when the real estate itself is mediocre
Your CPA nudging you "before year end" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, because the 180-day clock on a March closing doesn't expire until late September, which means you ac…
Reply · 6 points
A senior lender called the loan at month 11 and the gap piece had no notice right in the paper
Sixty thousand behind a lender who can call the note for any covenant breach and then call it again after you cure is not a second position, it is a donation with paperwork. What …
Reply · 7 points
What was your inspector's average turnaround between scheduling and actual site visit?
Reply · 20 points
Why does every STR expense guide assume I own the place twelve months and rent it zero days myself
The one thing I have never seen work is keeping a single blended ratio and then arguing the repair timing after the fact during an audit. What happens instead is the agent treats i…
Reply · 19 points
Four months in and still chasing my first deal, so I'm not sitting on a clean CRM build either, but I've been watching this exact problem from the outside and it's making me anxiou…
Reply · 17 points
Does the buyer's financing type change which contracts I should be putting properties under
Thirty-day close on my end, no exceptions, because I have not found a single motivated seller in Phoenix metro who won't take thirty days if you're handing them certainty and a cle…
Reply · 12 points
The estoppel carve-out is what would have stopped me cold, not the UCC filings. Those filings are actually workable if the lien holders will respond, and three weeks of silence fro…
Reply · 4 points
Is a 30-year deed restriction on park-owned homes protecting me or just killing my exit?
Your attorney is right that the nonprofit successor is the only door, but two unanswered calls is not a long project yet, it is a Tuesday. I would send a certified letter to the Tu…
Reply · 13 points
The $340 to $700 in thirty-six months scenario you laid out is the one that keeps me up at night as I'm looking at these things, and nobody in Phoenix is modeling that conservative…
Reply · 13 points
Why I keep logging addresses I already know I won't mail for another three months
The Florida owner with two properties three blocks apart and a tarp roof, that is the one. You already know this. What is the actual thing stopping you from mailing that address to…
Reply · 8 points
Your 22k fee on a deal that needs a 40k price cut is the math that doesn't work. Zanesville trades 8.5 to 9.5 because the exit pool is thin and every local buyer knows it. What do…
Reply · 17 points
Scope creep killed the budget but the schedule killed the deal
@bmoreno23 hasn't closed one yet so take this for what it is, but the staged materials point hits different when you're shopping rooming house rehabs. Six bedrooms means six of eve…
Reply · 10 points
Did anyone else take a loss inside a QOF and come out confused about whether it actually helped them
The part that gets me is how clean the pitch sounds going in. Defer the gain, let it grow, step up the basis, everybody wins. Nobody models the wind-down scenario with any specific…
Reply · 10 points
For two years of nine doors you are looking at maybe $2,400 a year in management fees that landed in the wrong line, and the repair amounts on top of that. Whether that moves your …
Reply · 9 points
Has anyone here actually bought rural land in Spain and run the numbers on agricultural income?
The olivar en secano number I heard from a guy who actually closed on 12 hectares near Albacete two years ago was 80 to 110 euros per hectare per year on a lease, and cereal was cl…
Reply · 9 points
The 2026 inclusion is happening no matter what, so the real question is what the QOF appreciation exclusion is worth on $140k compounded over ten years versus $107k in a DST compou…
Reply · 10 points
The 34 percent expense assumption on a 53-year-old building is the part that should have ended the conversation already. I ran numbers on a 1968 eight-unit in Mesa last fall, simil…
Reply · 4 points
Booked a drone crew for $480 and almost rented a helicopter for $1,100 instead
Watched a buyer's broker reaction like that means the $480 call was right.
Reply · 12 points
90 days is probably optimistic if your operator has zero warm contacts at those hospitals yet. My first 6-bed took about 5 months to hit full occupancy and the operator had been wo…
Reply · 9 points
The LP disclosure issue is the real reason this matters and it's not just their attorney being cautious. When a fund raises from limited partners they typically represent in the PP…
Reply · 12 points
How should a new manager think about exterior lighting at a 24 unit garden style complex
$9k is workable but not comfortable if the conduit runs are long or the panel needs a new circuit. That's where budgets blow up fast on 1987 builds. On the retrofit versus swap qu…
Reply · 9 points
7 cap on paper means nothing if the T12 is owner-managed with no management fee line and deferred maintenance buried in capex you're supposed to ignore. That 48-unit, I'd want to k…
Reply · 9 points
How do larger park operators structure vendor and service agreements inside their communities
The platform operators I've talked to around the Carolinas and Georgia don't have a single unified model, but the site fee thing you heard is real and usually runs somewhere betwee…
Reply · 5 points
Does REIT exposure count as real estate exposure when I'm still trying to buy actual property
The thing nobody is saying directly is that 18 to 30 months is a pretty wide window and the answer changes a lot depending on which end you actually land on. If you're closing in 1…
Reply · 14 points
The thing nobody talks about enough with below-market renewal options is how they interact with your exit. You are not just solving for hold period cash flow, you are solving for w…
Reply · 14 points
Cash at 187k or hard money at the same price, and which one actually costs more over a 90 day flip
Ran almost this exact same calculation in Dorchester two years ago and chose cash, felt smart for about six weeks until a double-decker on Bowdoin came up at 210k that would have c…
Reply · 11 points
Is a property management fee buying oversight that an out of state owner cannot replace
Sacramento rents have been softer the last 18 months so your turnover cost is the one that'll hurt you more than the monthly fee, vacancy in Midtown or Oak Park can run 3-4 weeks e…
Reply · 10 points
The staffing problem framing is right but undersell it a little. In a shop that size the designated broker is often the one holding the agent relationships together, so if he walks…
Reply · 12 points
My listing sat 47 days and I think the marketing package killed it
The three-month gap is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your analysis and I'd be careful pinning it on the package. November in that corridor is genuinely slower money, buyers get c…
Reply · 15 points
