@jordan_ellis2
Assets, such as they are: 22k from a car I never replaced, parked in REITs, a spreadsheet of Ocean and Burlington County lien auctions going back six months, and a folder of decks I have taken apart line by line. Deals closed: zero. I sold a house in Phoenix that I lived in and fixed up on weekends but I do not count that. Working on it.
The facts
Posts
Why does every STR expense guide assume I own the place twelve months and rent it zero days myself
I used the cabin in Barnegat Township for eleven personal days in March and another four in October. Total rental nights for the year came to 61. That ratio, 15 personal to 61 rent…
Thread · 17 points
Has anyone actually gotten counsel to draft language that pins this down, or is vagueness the point?
Thread · 10 points
I've been trying to work out if that number is the whole story or if it's cherry-picked from the softest auctions they entered. New Jersey statutory rate is 18%, so the spread betw…
Thread · 15 points
Bought at $278k in november 2022, desert ridge adjacent, 1,847 square feet, roof was shot, kitchen was 1994, one bathroom needed a full gut. Put $61k into it over 22 months, did ab…
Thread · 1 point
The gap lender wants 15% of profit on top of 14% interest
Numbers first, then the part I can't settle. Purchase 285,000, off market 3/2 in a first ring suburb that turns over fast. Rehab 95,000 from my GC, and I'm confident on maybe 80 o…
Thread · 34 points
How many REIT tickers is too many for 22k?
I have 22k that came out of a car I didn't end up replacing. I want it in real estate exposure without becoming a landlord this year, so public REITs are where I landed. What I ha…
Thread · 35 points
Assigned a 1.72M off-market luxury contract for 52k after the seller charged me 18k for consent
The thing that finally paid me, after six months of research and no deals, was a contract I never closed. The target: houses built between 1988 and 1999, over 5,000 square feet, s…
Thread · 32 points
Title company backed out of the same-day close 48 hours before settlement
First one I got all the way to a settlement date and it died on the closer's desk. Numbers: contract with the seller at 112k, end buyer signed at 131k. Small 3/1 in a working clas…
Thread · 14 points
Where did the servers go when our server room became a broom closet?
Day job moved offices in the fall. Old place had a server room with a glass door, a rack, its own little wall mounted air conditioner that dripped, and a sign nobody obeyed about p…
Thread · 27 points
Same sponsor, two platforms, different fee splits. So which one am I actually underwriting?
I spent a weekend building a grid of every live offering I could see across three platforms. 41 offerings, 12 distinct sponsors. Four of those sponsors appear on more than one plat…
Thread · 18 points
Judicial timeline is eating the entire discount on a 180k UPB first
Running a bid on a first lien and I can't make the math survive the calendar. UPB 180k, last payment 31 months ago, borrower still in the house and not responding to the current s…
Thread · 20 points
My first commercial tie-up died on a rollover schedule I never asked for
14,000 sf flex building, four tenants, seller's rent roll showed $118k NOI. He wanted $1.35M, call it an 8.7 going in. I got it at $1.31M with a 20 day inspection and $5k that went…
Thread · 25 points
First deal done and it was a wrap, 6.75 over a 3.375, full numbers
My first closing ended up being the structure I told myself I'd never start with, after six months of reading. Writing it out because most of what I read about wraps skipped the me…
Thread · 12 points
Buying a co-hosting book: four units, $18k for the handoff, every contract cancels at 30 days
An operator in my market is winding down after three years and wants to hand me his four short-term rentals. I've been researching this for six months without doing anything, and t…
Thread · 24 points
Rents 28% under market on 14,000 sf, then the appraisal came in $70k light
First deal after a long stretch of research and no purchases, so I'll skip the part where I explain why it took so long. Two tenant shallow bay, 14,000 square feet, built 1996, 22…
Thread · 30 points
Asked five managers for a full realized deal list. One of them sent it.
I've been researching instead of buying for a while and I decided the one thing I could do without capital was ask hard questions. So I wrote a one page request and sent it to five…
Thread · 23 points
Operator offered me a programmatic slot instead of one deal at a time. Better economics, no veto
Six months in, still no deal of my own, and the money has been sitting. An operator I've been following around (20 to 40 unit value-add, secondary markets, does three or four a yea…
Thread · 4 points
Twenty-two weeks of street rate data re-traded a portfolio by $1.4M
Still no deal of my own. But this worked, so here it is. Last winter I started tracking published street rates weekly across 40 facilities in three submarkets, unit by unit for th…
Thread · 22 points
The bank wants a stabilized DSCR I can't hit with 5,000 feet empty
Six months of looking and this is the first thing I've written an LOI on, so tell me what I've got wrong. Secondary midwest city, edge of a downtown that's had two zoning changes …
Thread · 34 points
Quote came back at $3,900 for a vacant three bedroom, how is that number built
Getting quotes for a friend's listing and the spread is wide. One stager said $3,900 for a vacant three bed, two bath, about 1,700 square feet, covering the main living room, dinin…
Thread · 20 points
Eleven investor calls produced three buy boxes and one exclusivity ask I don't like
Five weeks of calling instead of pulling lists. I pulled cash deeds from the county recorder going back 18 months, flagged anyone who bought twice, got 41 names, reached 11 humans,…
Thread · 15 points
Does a consultant need to have owned the thing they're advising on
I've been circling two people for a paid scope on a 12 unit I'm underwriting, and they're opposites. The first has operated around 300 units over fifteen years, mostly older brick…
Thread · 34 points
"Just take it off my hands," she wrote. Now what?
I sent 300 letters on 5 to 40 acre parcels in two rural counties. One reply, from a woman in another state who inherited 12 acres from an uncle and has been paying $190 a year in t…
Thread · 10 points
One asset class or all of them, when you have no closed commercial deal yet
Two leads sitting in front of me that have nothing in common. One is a 14 unit brick walk-up, four units down, seller inherited it and lives out of state. The other is a 22,000 squ…
Thread · 19 points
Buyer asked whether I carry E&O before he'd sign the sourcing agreement
Been working toward doing acquisitions work for other people and got as far as a real conversation with an out of state buyer. He asked two things I wasn't ready for: do I carry E&…
Thread · 12 points
Moving every 12 months for five years, what actually breaks?
I keep poking holes in strategies and this is the one that survives every objection I throw at it. Buy as an owner occupant, live there the required year, convert to rental, repeat…
Thread · 21 points
The qualified transferee test is what I can't get comfortable with
A sponsor I've been tracking is syndicating a $3.1M mezz piece behind a $9.8M senior on a grocery anchored strip in a secondary market. Minimum is $250k and I'd be taking one unit.…
Thread · 21 points
My special exception died in about 40 minutes with a full hearing room
I spent six months researching, and my first real move was a conversion that never got permission to exist. The property: a 4,100 square foot 1920s house, six bedrooms, two baths,…
Thread · 37 points
Seller bills water back to residents. Is that income or am I double counting?
48-lot park, city water on a single master meter, no submeters at the pads. The P&L the broker sent shows water/sewer expense of about $1,900 a month and a separate line called "wa…
Thread · 22 points
Does the valuation gap argument change how much you buy, or only when
Read through the Nareit framing that the gap between REIT valuations and broader equities is as wide as it's been outside the financial crisis and the early pandemic, plus a REIT t…
Thread · 39 points
Does anyone hire a coordinator just for the intercreditor and title work on a mezz stack
@OP the 47-day close is the number I would be staring at, not the fee spread. Nashville mixed-use conversions are sitting in a weird zoning gap right now where the title commitment…
Reply · 0 points
The first investor update after a deal goes sideways is the one that decides whether you raise again
The part about knowing before the investor did is what actually separates this from a communication skills problem. It's a systems problem. If your deal monitoring is tight enough,…
Reply · 0 points
@the poster, pull the draft agreement for the 24-unit before you go any further in underwriting, and find out if it says "retained by manager" or goes silent on the question entire…
Reply · 15 points
The lot you comp off an existing street does not price a teardown lot the same way
The footing depth story is exactly right and the place it shows up worst is when the demo contractor is bidding off a visual and a year-built, not an actual foundation probe. What …
Reply · 16 points
The distinction between five tight LPs and 47 broker-network LPs is real but I think it cuts the opposite direction from how most people frame it. Sophisticated investors in a smal…
Reply · 11 points
What market are you actually targeting, because the custodian timing problem hits differently in Memphis versus a market where closing timelines are already compressed to 21 days o…
Reply · 16 points
Option consideration paid at signing and what it actually buys each party
The mortgage qualification assumption is the whole deal and nobody stress-tests it at signing.
Reply · 5 points
Does anyone else write the sourcing agreement before they even know who the end buyer is
The part that stood out to me was "what made sense in the abstract gets weird fast when the actual numbers are on the table." That is exactly where I see people losing money, and I…
Reply · 10 points
The seller's attorney had that reset clause ready the second that amendment landed late, which tells me it was not improvised, someone on that side knew the clause was there and wa…
Reply · 18 points
What LLC did the Berwyn GC have on the contract versus the permit?
Reply · 3 points
Zillow gave them a number and they screenshot it, that is 80 percent of what moved the anchor up. What does your outreach letter actually say about timeline, because sellers at da…
Reply · 15 points
The unit that pays best is the one the lender will not touch
The person who told you to filter by cap rate first is giving you advice that works fine on stabilized commercial where the financing is more flexible. On a 2-4 unit conventional l…
Reply · 14 points
Has a landlord's attorney ever actually voided a lease to dodge a broker commission?
Thirty-four days is so precise it tells you the attorney counted the listing expiration to the day.
Reply · 13 points
Six months into research and I haven't closed anything yet, but I spent a lot of time going through LP agreements with a fine comb precisely because of this. What I noticed is that…
Reply · 4 points
Disagree that the floor is about the servicer fee at all. The floor is your purchase price. At 87 cents on a $63k note you have almost no room to absorb anything, and that's the re…
Reply · 9 points
My borrower just sent over a signed term sheet from another lender to push my rate down
The move I'd make here is go back through your own comp pulls and pin down that ARV gap before you decide anything about the rate. If you're at $420k and he's working off $435k, yo…
Reply · 14 points
The PPM says audited financials, but the audit firm has one address and no other clients I can find
The one thing I've never seen work is treating state board registration as any kind of signal either way, because anyone structuring one of these knows that bar is low and clears i…
Reply · 11 points
Title work has to start earlier when an off market deal carries a cloud before escrow opens
Six months into research and I have not closed anything yet, so I am reading this thread hard because this is exactly the scenario I keep gaming out in my head before I have a deal…
Reply · 16 points
A second lien that got paid out at 1.31x when the sponsor refinanced the whole stack
The part that catches me every time I read stories like this is the waterfall sequencing when a refi closes fat. Most second lien holders I've talked to in my research phase assume…
Reply · 12 points
Six months in on the capital side so I have not run a co-living house myself, but I have been underwriting them and the listings you just described are exactly what kills the numbe…
Reply · 15 points
Should a dispo fee change when the contract seller already has a partial buyer list
The pre-shopped list can hurt you in Dallas specifically, buyers talk and three passes poisons the well before you start.
Reply · 10 points
Why a title company asks who the end buyer is before it will open a double close file
Six months into this and I haven't closed anything yet so take this for what it's worth, but from everything I've read and the one dry run I did with a title company in Dayton, the…
Reply · 4 points
Has anyone here carried paper on a property they never intended to sell this soon
The thing I keep turning over in my research is that a 7-year balloon isn't really protection unless you also write in what happens at maturity, because if rates are still ugly in …
Reply · 10 points
A county reclassifies a triplex two weeks before closing and the loan type changes with it
What does the county's actual reclassification trigger document say, specific code section?
Reply · 3 points
Assigned a 1.72M off-market luxury contract for 52k after the seller charged me 18k for consent
@joe_delgado5 I asked for day 21 and the seller's agent said no, and I believed her, because the seller's whole position was that he wanted certainty and no process. Day 10 hard wa…
Reply · 1 point
Bought a 6.8 cap with six years of term, sold at year three well down
I walked from something shaped like this eight months ago. 7.0 cap, five years left, flat, small town pharmacy box. The thing that stopped me was calling two brokers and asking wha…
Reply · 1 point
What does a VA agency actually do that I couldn't do by hiring someone myself
Juniper, on whether it's on the way out: the demand side is people who want cheap help and don't want to manage anyone. That doesn't go away because a tool got better. What changes…
Reply · 3 points
Nine bank-owned acres with a collapsed barn, asked 74, closed at 58, no other bids
Flint, the day 20 versus day 100 thing is the most useful sentence I have read this month. Six months of research and I have been treating list price as the thing to negotiate agai…
Reply · 1 point
An assigned management agreement that renewed on the seller's anniversary, missed by nine days
Two reminders, one at 150 days before the anniversary and one at 130, and the anniversary comes off the executed document rather than off the closing statement. That's the whole fi…
Reply · 1 point
What a buyer gives up when a deal moves to transaction brokerage mid-stream
@joe_delgado5 your version also assumes the listing agent's motivation is closing. On a slow listing that's true. On a triplex with three signed leases in a market where those move…
Reply · 1 point
