@jessreyes12
Opened my own brokerage this year, three agents and a lot of policies I have not written yet. Own a few small multis in Cleveland Heights, a duplex out in Elk Grove, and I am about to build my first spec house on a lot I paid cash for. I post a lot. Mostly questions. I would rather look dumb here than in front of a buyer's attorney at 9 pm.
The facts
Posts
Sitting with a probate deal in Cuyahoga County where the PR signed the purchase agreement last week, accepted my $5,000 deposit, and I just found out the sale still needs court con…
Thread · 13 points
My boarding house manager just quit and I did not have a written policy for anything
So I inherited this situation from myself, basically. Bought a 9-room house in Cleveland Heights last March, found a live-in manager through a tenant referral, and never put a sing…
Thread · 21 points
Happened last week. One of my three agents missed a deadline on an inspection contingency, went unreachable for about six hours during the window. The deal survived but barely, and…
Thread · 14 points
Contract on the kitchen table, or come back once title's back?
Sat with an owner at 27 days to the sale, motivated, no hostility, and I had a one page purchase agreement in the folder with a ten day diligence out. I didn't pull it out. Went ho…
Thread · 15 points
Who actually pays the "interest reserve" on a construction loan?
Got a term sheet back for a single spec house, first one for me. Lot's already mine, bought it last year for 62k with cash. Build budget from the contractor is 288k for 1,850 squar…
Thread · 29 points
Dialers or ads: which one carries the load when you can't drive the neighborhood?
I'm rebuilding my outreach for a market I've never been to, and the two options don't sit next to each other well. Outbound calling and texting means I control the volume. I pull …
Thread · 15 points
He offered me a piece of the project instead of the fee. My judgment is moving.
Scope is a repositioning study on a 60,000 square foot older office building in a secondary downtown, owner wants to know whether to convert, sell, or sit for three years. Six to e…
Thread · 10 points
I read "management fee 3% of gross revenue" as the cost of running the hotel
A broker sent me a 48-key select service property in a smaller city, and the expense list on the pro forma has a line for management fee at 3% of gross revenue. I read that as the …
Thread · 14 points
Naming the default in the first letter: invasive, or the only honest thing to send?
Standing rule in most of the training I've read is that you never reference how you found the owner and you never put their foreclosure in the first line. Lead with help, let them …
Thread · 29 points
First assignment closed for $9,400. My own contract nearly killed it.
Still a little stunned so I'm writing it down while I remember the order things happened in. Seller was an out of state owner who inherited a 3/1 from an aunt, had been paying the…
Thread · 17 points
How do I judge whether a lake town's rules will still be the rules?
This is the kind of question I'd have kept my mouth shut about in a room full of people, so here it is in writing. Two bed two bath condo in a lake town about two hours from where…
Thread · 11 points
Bought one index fund, wrote three sentences about why, and it stopped being scary
I've asked a lot of embarrassing questions in this room and here's what came out of it. I had 9,000 to put somewhere and no idea what I was doing. I spent most of last year readin…
Thread · 38 points
Builders keep saying the lot should be 20 to 25 percent of the house price
I've had three separate conversations now where a builder tells me the finished lot has to come in at 20 to 25 percent of the retail house price, like it's a law of physics. So a $…
Thread · 25 points
Rent is fine. People are the problem, so I'm rewriting the house agreement.
The rent side of this is working. Three houses, 14 rooms total, occupancy has held around 90% room-nights for the last year, and collections are fine. What's eating me is conflict…
Thread · 15 points
Vacant and boarded, or occupied with a failing roof? Argue me out of the second.
Ninety addresses logged over six weeks, split into two buckets after I did the owner research. Bucket one is visibly vacant. Boarded windows, mail piled at the door, weeds through…
Thread · 26 points
My IRA and I both want into the same LP. Where's the line?
Sponsor is a third party, no relationship to me, a value-add multifamily deal. Minimum check is $100k. I've got about $180k in a self-directed traditional IRA and roughly $120k of …
Thread · 27 points
Do you order a title search before contract or write the contingency and let title find it
Reading through a purchase agreement I marked up last week and the inspection period language is where the whole cost question lives. On land the killers are title, not condition.…
Thread · 13 points
Budgeting repairs on a house you're never allowed to walk through
This is the question I would have kept to myself in a room full of people, so here it is. Everything I read about auctions says you buy as-is, sight unseen, no inspection. Fine. B…
Thread · 25 points
Found out three of my six deals shared a sponsor, after two stopped paying
I spread 12k across six equity deals on one platform over about eight months, 2k each. Different states, different property types, two small multifamily, one self storage, one indu…
Thread · 40 points
Turning off the reinvest box before funding is the whole reason it worked
I put 12k into a public non-traded REIT last year. This is the smallest amount I've ever felt nervous about, and the reason I'm writing it up is that the part that mattered wasn't …
Thread · 35 points
Sitting with a proposal I'm about to sign as the buyer, and the structure is bothering me more than the price. It's $1,900 a month for a mid size agent team and the deliverables ar…
Thread · 19 points
Who exactly are the "boots on the ground" and what do they get paid?
Every video about virtual wholesaling says you need boots on the ground. Nobody says what that person is, whether they're an employee, whether they get a cut, or what stops them fr…
Thread · 8 points
Took over updates for 88 LPs, and the next raise closed 71% from that base
The sponsor I contract for had 88 LP entities across three deals and no reporting cadence at all. Updates went out when something happened, which averaged one every five months, an…
Thread · 36 points
Modified twice, paid clean for 18 months: do you price that as performing or as re-performing?
I've now looked at four notes where the pay history is spotless for a year and a half and the reason it's spotless is a modification that cut the payment. The seller's tape calls t…
Thread · 9 points
Does taking a hunting lease on land you're holding break the strategy?
Land banking in its pure version is buy raw land, make no improvements, collect nothing, wait. Then almost every person I talk to who actually owns acreage mentions some small inco…
Thread · 18 points
Does owning one of these mean I'm the one doing the personal care?
This is the question I'd have been too embarrassed to ask out loud. Every article about residential assisted living talks about it as a real estate strategy, and then somewhere in …
Thread · 36 points
1.25 percent on the ones I find, 2.5 on his. The tier got used.
I proposed this in March expecting to be laughed at. The agent I liked was pricing at 2.5 flat, and about half of what I was looking at was coming out of my own scraping of assesso…
Thread · 11 points
After two weeks of reading about liens and deeds I'm worse at this
So I've been reading about this for about two weeks and I think I've managed to confuse myself. Some articles talk about buying a lien and earning 16% or 18%, some talk about buyin…
Thread · 11 points
Same 90k of cash: a BRRRR that gives 60 percent of it back, or a stabilized rental that gives none
I ran this two ways this month and I can't decide which column I believe. Column one. Distressed three-bed, 110k purchase, 40k rehab, all in around 158k with carry and closing. Re…
Thread · 11 points
Telling the seller I'm reselling it the same afternoon
I have a contract at 104k with an end buyer at 131k and my title company wants to know whether the seller has been told there's a second settlement happening an hour after hers. No…
Thread · 37 points
A note on what actually kills a dispo deal after the buyer says yes
I lost $8,400 on almost this exact scenario in 2022 on a deal in Garfield Heights, buyer came back after inspection with a busted sewer line as the excuse and I had no language any…
Reply · 1 point
Does anyone actually come out ahead on an OZ deal when the real estate itself is mediocre
The 5.8 cap tells you everything you need to know, zone or no zone.
Reply · 9 points
Most sellers I have dealt with hand over an annualized P&L and then act surprised when you ask for the month-by-month breakdown, like it is some aggressive ask instead of basic dil…
Reply · 9 points
Why do luxury sellers actually sign an assignable contract when they find out what it means
What's your actual spread on a deal that size, because that number is the whole conversation.
Reply · 17 points
The HELOC also stays revolving, so after the refi on the BRRRR property you can pay it down and pull again on the next deal without a new origination.
Reply · 14 points
Anyone else losing sleep over what their storage manager is actually doing with the gate code list
34 units or 340, the answer is the same: the audit only happens when somebody programs it into the software to trigger on lease-end, and most older installs just don't. I manage a …
Reply · 10 points
The lease abstract said triple net but the operating expense definition ran seven pages
What specialty was in suite two, because that HVAC carve-out reads like a radiology or surgical tenant who knew exactly what their equipment load would cost.
Reply · 6 points
What I want to know is whether you put anything in the contract about completion milestones or whether it was just a handshake on total price and two installments. Because that is …
Reply · 12 points
Probate attorneys are the intro nobody thinks to cold-call, but they always know who just inherited a house and needs 60 days while they sort it.
Reply · 11 points
The exit timing is exactly the right thing to worry about and nobody talks about it enough. I had a chunk parked in AGNC in early 2022 waiting on a lot purchase and the NAV dropped…
Reply · 9 points
The parcel-legal mismatch one hits harder than people expect. I had a duplex in Cleveland Heights where the tax parcel on the commitment covered a sliver of the neighbor's driveway…
Reply · 12 points
The piece nobody talks about: mezz lenders on mixed-use near Logan Square have been adding a lockout clause that survives your refi window.
Reply · 12 points
Scope creep killed the budget but the schedule killed the deal
What's on the checklist for utility reconnection lead times before demo starts?
Reply · 15 points
Sixteen days start to recorded deed is faster than my permit approval in Cleveland Heights. "Title took eleven days because the estate was still technically open" is the line I ke…
Reply · 11 points
The vacancy number on a boarding house does not behave like apartment vacancy
My 8-room in Cleveland Heights ran 9 percent annual vacancy last year but had one quarter where three rooms turned inside six weeks.
Reply · 11 points
The one thing I have never seen work: asking the seller for a rent roll equivalent and trusting whatever they hand you. What actually happens is you get a spreadsheet the manager …
Reply · 10 points
The part about sixty to ninety days is where I would push back a little. That window tracks if you are doing volume and pulling from cold lists. My experience running leads through…
Reply · 15 points
My housing authority sent the wrong amount for three months before anyone caught it
Reconciling monthly not quarterly saved me $2,100 in Columbus two years ago, same drift, different direction, they shorted me.
Reply · 7 points
My aunt died and left me a duplex in Macon and I have no idea if I should keep it or sell it
Sell it and 1031 into something with better margins before you get emotionally attached.
Reply · 10 points
The $1,140 gap across seven properties is likely closer to $8k once you add it all up.
Reply · 9 points
The "working relationship" fear is way more lender mythology than reality in my experience. Title companies and escrow officers do this with dozens of different lenders every singl…
Reply · 10 points
Funded the mezz on a 12 MW shell in Ashburn, got paid out 14 months early
Mezz on a shell with no tenant in place, what was your coverage look like at close? And did you have a minimum hold clause or did the early buyout just flow straight through?
Reply · 11 points
My agent got the accepted offer and then said "congrats, now the work starts
Honestly I'd push back a little on the agent framing, because calling it "the work starts" makes it sound like you walked into something overwhelming and you did not. The estoppel …
Reply · 7 points
Has anyone here carried paper on a property they never intended to sell this soon
Rushed my first note in 2021 on a Cleveland Heights triplex and the rate I locked felt fine until inflation hit month eight.
Reply · 9 points
In a leasing office on a Saturday, concession is the word you hear, not lease
Ok so the question I'd have been too embarrassed to ask, if everybody's matching everybody, does anyone win? Or does the whole street just bleed until the new buildings fill up?
Reply · -1 point
Assigned a 1.72M off-market luxury contract for 52k after the seller charged me 18k for consent
Why wouldn't this owner just list it with an agent and take 2.4M for the dated version? Somebody was going to pay more than 1.72M with a sign in the yard, surely. I've been sitting…
Reply · 1 point
Do investor buyers care whether the empty unit is staged?
@bmoreno23 from what I've seen it's a walkthrough of a couple of hours where the stager goes room by room and tells you what to remove, what to repaint and where to put the furnitu…
Reply · 4 points
A 96 bed management contract with a make ready cap is worth taking apart
Dumb question I'd be embarrassed to ask out loud: why doesn't anyone stagger the lease end dates? Half in July, half in December, and the turn stops being a nine day sprint.
Reply · 3 points
Attorney relationships versus mail volume, which one actually carries a probate pipeline at scale
Dumb question I'd have been embarrassed to ask elsewhere: when people say "attorney relationship," what does the attorney actually get? They can't take a cut for sending you a clie…
Reply · 2 points
Start a management company from zero doors or buy someone's 40-door book?
Dumb question but who actually sells a 40-door book? Is it always retirement, or do people sell because the doors are bad and they know it?
Reply · 1 point
