@diane_kowalski
Raw land is where most of my time goes, that and watching how long things sit before somebody moves. Default leads too, Macomb County lately, when the payoff figure shows up before the auction does, which is rarer than it should be. Reading up on self storage because it keeps coming up and I do not understand it yet. I ask beginner questions on purpose.
The facts
Posts
I keep looking at parcels in Macomb County and nearby and I genuinely do not know what makes a site attractive to someone building self storage versus someone passing on it. Acreag…
Thread · 17 points
Does the seller's payoff figure ever just not arrive before you need to make a written offer
Been watching this pattern for a few months now. I scope a default lead, request the payoff through the servicer, and the clock on the auction keeps moving while I wait. Three lead…
Thread · 12 points
Storage while home sales are frozen: entry point or reason to sit out?
I've spent most of my time on raw land, so storage is new to me. What pulled me in is that the sector seems to be arguing with itself right now and both sides sound reasonable. Th…
Thread · 33 points
What does a boarding house actually rent, a room or a bed
I'm mostly looking at land and holding patterns, but a listing in a small town described itself as a rooming house with 9 sleeping rooms and 21 residents on the license. That confu…
Thread · 15 points
Two states forever, or a compliance playbook you can drop on any state
I've got a build decision to make and it changes what I spend the next year on. Option one is depth. Two states, learn them properly, one attorney per state on retainer, contract …
Thread · 30 points
JV on 11 acres of raw land, partner's cash buyer list turned out to be all rehabbers
Signed a JV on 11 acres about 20 minutes out from a growing secondary market. Seller was an out of state heir who wanted it gone by year end. I got it at 88k on a 60 day contract w…
Thread · 29 points
Six major decisions or twenty, and where consent rights start freezing a deal
I've now read three JV operating agreements side by side and the only section that meaningfully differs is the major decisions list, the things the operator can't do without my wri…
Thread · 28 points
Discount to replacement cost or a submarket where deliveries already stopped
I've spent the last year pricing new construction on land I control and nothing pencils. Hard costs on a garden-style shape came back roughly 39 percent above where I'd have modele…
Thread · 13 points
Buy and hold the parcel yourself or assign it and move on
I've been researching land mostly as something to hold, and the more I read the wholesaling side the less obvious the choice gets. Assign it: no capital tied up, no property taxes…
Thread · 30 points
The refi never happened and the position still cleared 9.4 percent
This one closed in Q3 and I've been sitting on the numbers for a month before writing it up. Structure: $85k into a 214-unit garden multifamily deal in a mid-size southeast market…
Thread · 29 points
Sponsor co-invest of 10% versus a fee load half as heavy
Two equity offerings in front of me, same asset type, both targeting low teens IRR on a five year hold. First one: sponsor puts in 10% of the equity alongside investors, 2% acquis…
Thread · 6 points
Property taxes went from 4,100 to 9,800 the year after I closed on the triplex
Triplex, 470k, bought as a long hold with a manager on it so I could stay out of the day to day. Gross rents 3,975 a month. My model showed about 640 a month of cash flow after eve…
Thread · 35 points
Found something that fits a land buyer's criteria. No idea what to ask.
I've been reading land for months without buying anything, and in the process I got to know a guy who assembles recreational acreage. He buys four or five parcels a year, all cash,…
Thread · 21 points
Legal bill on a $1.5m pref piece, what am I looking at
A sponsor holding fully entitled land asked me to come in with $1.5m of preferred equity at 13 percent, all accruing, since the land produces nothing until it's sold or a construct…
Thread · 26 points
Underwriting the residual on a 6 kW per rack building in a 60 kW world
Chasing a question I can't settle. A facility built around 2014 for something like 6 to 8 kW per rack, air cooled, decent connectivity, on a feed with modest headroom. Fully leased…
Thread · 32 points
Which parcel was the mowing bill for? I could not tell her.
I hold six raw parcels, all in one county, all bought over about nine years. Two are farmed on a handshake lease, one has a billboard easement, the rest just sit there and cost me …
Thread · 28 points
Three carry-back notes and the installment reporting I assumed I had
I split 61 acres into five lots after plat approval, put in a gravel access drive and one culvert, and sold three of them on my own paper over about fourteen months. 78k, 84k and 9…
Thread · 11 points
Trying to understand what my custodian actually does for the fee
I'm two weeks into opening a self-directed IRA and I've read the fee schedule four times. There's an annual account fee, a per-asset holding fee, and a transaction fee each time mo…
Thread · 36 points
Five year fixed or three year with a soft prepay, if you believe 2027 is better than 2026
I've been reading the supply side for a while, mostly because I wanted to know when land in these submarkets stops competing with new apartment deliveries. The read most people see…
Thread · 15 points
If the apartment trough is real, is the liquid version of it good enough?
I spend most of my time on land, so this is outside my lane. What got my attention is that the pipeline for new apartments is contracting sharply and vacancy looks like it topped o…
Thread · 27 points
The pilot sat in my truck for forty minutes waiting on an approval that never came
I'm still in the researching phase on land, mostly holding patterns and figuring out what I'd actually do with a tract, but I wanted marketing-grade aerial on a 60 acre piece I was…
Thread · 16 points
Year one on a cabin closed at $26k net. The well nearly ended it.
Posting the numbers because this room mostly has people asking whether the nightly model works and I have one full year of it now. What it is: two bed one bath cabin, about 1,100 …
Thread · 13 points
Capital call on one deal, a fresh offering next door at half the basis
Two decisions and they interact, which is why I can't separate them. Position one, in since 2022. 320 units, 2016 vintage, big Sun Belt metro. Purchase was $61.4M, $192k a unit, f…
Thread · 14 points
Lender's DSCR test is sizing my 14-unit loan below what I need
Working a 14-unit at 1.62M asking. My underwriting lands NOI at about 96k after a 5 percent management fee and 300 per unit per year in reserves, so roughly a 5.9 going-in cap. Ban…
Thread · 13 points
One lead type in twelve states, or every lead type in one county
I've spent the last five months on land seller leads specifically, and the depth versus width question is now the whole decision. Width argument. Land sellers are thin on the grou…
Thread · 38 points
I can't defend my reserve number on a 12-unit that's 70 percent voucher
Working through an underwriting problem on a 12-unit that a seller describes as 70 percent voucher occupied. Contract rents average 1,180, HAP portion averages 790 of that, so roug…
Thread · 26 points
Seller carry with a 5 year balloon on a hold I think takes 12
Parcel is $240k, seller will carry at 6.5% with 20% down, interest only, quarterly payments around $2,600, balloon at year five. He's firm on the five years. My growth thesis on t…
Thread · 33 points
A storage developer wants to option my 6 acres. What am I looking at?
I own six acres on a state highway just outside a town of about 19,000. Bought it three years ago to hold. Zoned commercial, water and power at the road, sewer is not, there's a se…
Thread · 36 points
Closed the 1031 into a QSR pad at a 6.33 after the guaranty turned out to be a 41-store subsidiary
Two infill land parcels I'd been sitting on for six years finally sold this spring, and the proceeds went into a single tenant drive-thru restaurant pad. Closed about six weeks ago…
Thread · 29 points
One mobilization fee across three parcels put me at $383 each
I've got parcels in a rural county where the drone quotes were running $600 to $700 each because the pilot has an hour and forty minutes of drive each way. Three separate bookings …
Thread · 14 points
The "sun-drenched interiors" line is doing real work here. What's the square footage on that B-class two-bedroom, because that changes everything about what the first sentence sho…
Reply · 0 points
A senior lender called the loan at month 11 and the gap piece had no notice right in the paper
@the_original_poster what state was this in, because the cure period length changes everything here. In Michigan a junior can sometimes move faster than people expect if they know …
Reply · 8 points
Eleven weeks to full on memory care adjacent is fast enough that I would want to know whether your operator had existing relationships with that referral source before you started,…
Reply · 14 points
The regional bank piece is what I keep getting hung up on when I read pref deal breakdowns. CMBS intercreditor is where I have seen people's removal rights basically dissolve in re…
Reply · 14 points
A paid-off home sitting idle is a capital problem worth solving
The framing assumes the primary is the right place to pull from, and I would push back on that. In Macomb County I have watched people do exactly this structure and the one that hu…
Reply · 17 points
My land pipeline has three stages after first contact and I added a fourth specifically for anyone who walked a parcel, I call it "site visited, quiet," because I kept losing track…
Reply · 11 points
Anyone else losing sleep over what their storage manager is actually doing with the gate code list
Forty-seven active codes against thirty-one occupied units when I finally pulled the report myself last spring.
Reply · 6 points
My septic call cost me a $4,800 upgrade I never got back on a 4-acre parcel in Geauga County
Four-acre rural buyers on terms in that market are almost never running title work either, let alone reading a septic report. The upgrade was for the county, not the buyer. What I…
Reply · 15 points
Did my buyer's agent just save me from a deal or kill a good one, still not sure which
The unverifiable tenant income is doing more work in this decision than the ARV gap is, and I don't see you talking about it much. If she can't show a lease or bank statements you…
Reply · 11 points
Did anyone close a deal in the first six months without spending a dollar on lists or dialers?
Macomb County, I watched a guy pick up a vacant lot off a neighbor tip in month four, zero list spend. The neighbor just knew the guy hadn't paid taxes in two years and wanted the …
Reply · 9 points
Macomb County right now, 60-day defaults are sitting at 82 to 84 percent, not 88.
Reply · 12 points
My gap money went into an RV park refinance and I am still not sure I understood what I owned
Chillicothe RV math is tight enough that a bathhouse delay in shoulder season can crater the whole model before summer ever shows up.
Reply · 7 points
The LP versus preferred equity distinction matters less than most people think at the structural level. What the IRS actually looks at is whether you, as the account holder, have p…
Reply · 9 points
The attorney is not wrong, which is the painful part. I had almost the same carve-out in an operating agreement on a parcel deal in Macomb and the operator used it to pull a refina…
Reply · 13 points
Does the spread change when the underlying loan has an ARM in it
Most people writing wraps just pick a fixed buyer payment and move on, which is exactly backwards when the underlying is adjustable. What I would do instead is tie the buyer's paym…
Reply · 7 points
My storage fund GP rolled three assets into a continuation vehicle and called it a liquidity event
Fresno and secondary Texas are what you're holding now, and that's not an accident.
Reply · 1 point
How a rural build to suit penciled at under $900,000 with a lease signed before the slab was poured
Watched a similar LOI-first move collapse in Moberly in 2021 when the tenant's regional director got replaced and the new guy killed the deal at permit stage.
Reply · 11 points
Does the borrower check change when the collateral is a tax certificate rather than a title
What's the borrower's plan if the owner redeems two weeks before the deed was supposed to drop? Does your borrower have runway to sit on dead capital or are they counting on that c…
Reply · 11 points
60 cents on the dollar at disposition and I still owe the LP their full pref
Compounding pref on a 3-year hold extension is what kills it, not the exit price.
Reply · 18 points
My agent got the accepted offer and then said "congrats, now the work starts
@diane_kowalski hasn't weighed in yet so I'll add what bit me hardest on my first actual purchase versus the inherited situation. The utility account transfers took me six weeks lo…
Reply · 15 points
Does preferred equity work on a boarding house acquisition or does the year one coupon break it
Tried exactly this in Akron 2021, 16 rooms, deferred coupon, lost $38k when the operator folded in month nine.
Reply · 10 points
Ran into this exact structure in 2021, Phoenix industrial deal, 36-month projected hold that turned into 54 and the sponsor collected asset management fees the whole way through wh…
Reply · 11 points
A second lien that got paid out at 1.31x when the sponsor refinanced the whole stack
Seen three of these go the other way specifically because the sponsor's replacement lender got cold feet at appraisal.
Reply · 9 points
What saying yes to a 3.5 percent buyer's agent ask on a 2.8M listing actually costs
The 3.5 ask is aggressive even on luxury. In my market the buyer-side on anything above 2M has been running 2 to 2.25, and agents who push past that on high-price properties are us…
Reply · 7 points
Six years in, the sponsor called a special dividend and I lost the reinvestment timing entirely
Did the PPM actually define what triggers a special dividend, or was it fully discretionary?
Reply · 9 points
How do I price the laundry situation before I buy
Riverside County co-living tenants are pretty price-sensitive, so I would not assume $40 lands cleanly without some resistance. I've seen rooms in that market sit longer the moment…
Reply · 14 points
Does a cosmetic flip actually net more than 15 percent after everything is counted
13 is probably your real ceiling on hard money in this market and the people saying 20 are either counting their own sweat as free or bought in a window that closed three years ago…
Reply · 4 points
When a 4-unit is listed unit by unit as tenants leave, does staging one affect the others
The 27-day gap is real but two data points won't separate staging from seasonality or buyer traffic shifts. My read on multi-unit staging is that it matters most when buyers are tr…
Reply · 10 points
The carry cost number reads low, gilbert comps I tracked ran $1,100 to $1,400 a month all-in through 2023.
Reply · 3 points
A 1961 mineral severance nearly ate a 24k assignment on 31 acres
Was there a survey of record, or is the 31 acres a deed call from a description written when the pine was standing? Every rural tract I've looked at is "31 acres more or less" and …
Reply · 0 points
