@kevin_lombard
New enough that I still read everything twice. I have a condo in Cleveland I probably priced wrong and a duplex in Akron I am about to close on, and I am mostly here trying to understand the passive side, what a sponsor actually owes you, what the reserve line should be, that kind of thing. If I ask a dumb question it is because I would rather ask than assume.
The facts
Posts
Been staring at this since I signed the purchase agreement. On the duplex I budgeted about $180 a month into reserves, which is roughly 4 percent of what the two units should bring…
Thread · 10 points
He said the number that kills first-time STR buyers is not the occupancy estimate, it is the gap between occupied nights and paid nights after platform fees, cleaning reimbursement…
Thread · 14 points
I watched her pull up that comp herself on her phone. The 2022 sale was a full reno, corner lot, finished basement. Hers has the original kitchen and has been sitting 61 days. I do…
Thread · 13 points
Does the inspector's job end when he hands me the report or is he supposed to walk me through it
My Akron closing is in 19 days and the inspector I hired sent me a 58-page PDF at 9:47 PM with no call, no summary, nothing. I have been reading it for three hours and I am genuine…
Thread · 9 points
My listing agent has gone six months without one showing update unless I text first
So I'm on the passive side and still in the prep phase, not selling anything yet, but I bought a small condo in Cleveland last year thinking I might list it this spring. Hired an a…
Thread · 9 points
Does a cleanout estimate before closing actually change what I offer on the property
Closing in about six weeks on a duplex in Akron, 1940s build, previous tenant left two years ago. The listing photos show furniture, bags, a full garage. I have not walked it yet. …
Thread · 15 points
Can I sell the note I'm carrying before the balloon hits
Bought a fourplex in akron last year, carried the paper at 8% with a 7 year balloon, and I'm already wondering if I could sell this note to someone in year 2 or 3 if I needed the c…
Thread · 4 points
Maintenance capex is 4% of revenue in one filing and 11% in another
I've been reading through public filings for the listed data center owners because I wanted to understand what a passive holder actually pays out of the rent before anything reache…
Thread · 15 points
What does a VA agency actually do that I couldn't do by hiring someone myself
I'm reading through service businesses in real estate and this one confuses me more than the others. The agency doesn't own anything and doesn't do the work. They find a person, t…
Thread · 40 points
Two 5-units, same price: one full at market, one where every tenant is 200 under
I've read the section on income valuation twice and I think I finally understand why these two buildings are asking the same number. Both are 5 units, same small city, about a mile…
Thread · 17 points
$1,000 to start, and I don't know what the two buttons on the platform do
I set up an account on one of the crowdfunding platforms to see what it actually looks like inside. There are two very different things offered and I can't tell what separates them…
Thread · 11 points
After six weeks of vendor proposals the per-lead math never works
I've been reading vendor proposals for six weeks and I want someone to poke at the arithmetic before I sign anything. Vendor A prices per delivered lead. $75 for what they call a …
Thread · 36 points
The 70 percent rule keeps giving me a max purchase price that's below every listing I look at
I've been running the formula on everything in a 20 mile radius. ARV times 0.70, minus repairs, and that's the most I can pay. On a house listed at 189 where I think ARV is 250 an…
Thread · 17 points
The second lender came in 0.375 lower. Here's what changed.
I've been planning this purchase for over a year and financing was the part I was most afraid of, so I want to write down what actually happened. Small three bedroom, $268,000 pur…
Thread · 17 points
The interest reserve made the note look current right up to the payoff statement
I lent 50k as a second position note into a BRRRR on a small single family, 12 percent, interest only, 12 month term, repaid from the refinance. Monthly interest arrived on time ev…
Thread · 37 points
Exit cap 15 basis points above entry, five year hold. Which line do you break first?
I've been reading two offering models side by side for a week and the thing that keeps stopping me is the terminal value. Deal one: 200 units, entry cap 5.1, exit cap 5.25 at the …
Thread · 35 points
Signed a 45-day, one-county agreement and closed inside it at 289k
The first draft the agent handed me was 12 months, the whole state, 3 percent. I read it twice, then read it a third time, and the part that bothered me wasn't the percent. It was …
Thread · 31 points
The part of a tiered commission where the tier actually paid
I sold the condo I'd lived in for nine years to fund the thing I'm slowly building. Because I read everything twice, I asked all three agents whether they'd do a tiered structure a…
Thread · 16 points
Appraisal-based index numbers and what the 6.9 percent is actually measuring
I read the NCREIF timberland volatility figure three times before it bothered me. Around 6.9 percent standard deviation against roughly 16 for public equities, and the properties i…
Thread · 26 points
LP positions inside a self-directed retirement account, or keep them taxable
I've been reading the same argument in two directions for weeks and I want to hear it from people who've actually done it. The case for using a self-directed IRA: syndications tak…
Thread · 18 points
I've been reading through the 2025 state changes and the pattern that jumps out is that most of them attach to marketing and to the fact that the wholesaler doesn't own the propert…
Thread · 34 points
With AVMs eating the $300 to $600 work, is the complex stuff enough to live on
Two numbers in this room don't fit together for me. A single family appraisal is $300 to $600, and AVMs or property condition reports already sit on something like 35 to 45 percent…
Thread · 19 points
The acceleration language in this wrap note draft works backwards
Not doing a deal. Somebody in a local group shared an anonymized wrap note and deed of trust package as a teaching example and I've been going through it clause by clause, which is…
Thread · 10 points
Do you underwrite every certificate as a property purchase, or price it purely for yield?
Reading this room for a few weeks and there are two clearly different practices in it and both are defended by people who've done more than I have. The first says: most certificat…
Thread · 19 points
Redfin says luxury buyer-agent commissions ticked down. On a $5M sale does that even register?
The finding I can't stop turning over: after the new rules, buyer-agent commission percentages on high-end homes drifted slightly lower while the more affordable end held or went u…
Thread · 35 points
The seller handed me a ledger instead of the HAP contract
3 bed 1 bath in a small town, $118,000, roof has maybe three or four years left. At the walkthrough the seller mentioned the tenant has a Housing Choice Voucher, has been there fou…
Thread · 34 points
$2,400 and four months on a sub-to that died at the insurance step
This was my first attempt at anything creative and I want to write down where it fell apart while I still remember the order. Seller was an older man, loan at 3.25%, balance about…
Thread · 30 points
Fee stack in a 240-unit PPM: asset management is 2% of gross revenue, not equity. Is that the tell?
I asked to see documents on a deal a friend's family is in, mostly to practice reading them. 240 units, $34M purchase, $12M equity, five to seven year hold, $4.8M of hard costs in …
Thread · 16 points
Read Public Act 25-168 four times and the 90 day rule still loses me
I read everything twice and I've now read this one four times. What I understand. It takes effect July 1, 2026. It requires wholesalers to register. It gives the seller a three da…
Thread · 22 points
Somewhere in the second read of the annual report, square feet stopped mattering
I read two data center REIT annual reports over three weeks. Read each one twice, because that's how I do everything. Somewhere in the second pass I started counting words, and the…
Thread · 14 points
Still waiting to close on my first passive deal so I have not signed an LPA yet, but I ran the exact scenario you described on a fund deck I got last month.
Reply · 0 points
Closing costs hit me different reading this because I just got quoted $1,950 per side from a title company in Summit County for a straightforward cash deal, so that $3,200 combined…
Reply · 6 points
Cure period wording in my Akron deal is just as vague as the trigger itself.
Reply · 7 points
Nine thousand two hundred net on a house you already owned is a number I cannot argue with.
Reply · 11 points
A senior lender called the loan at month 11 and the gap piece had no notice right in the paper
The line about seniors refusing to sign an intercreditor entirely is the one I needed to see spelled out like that. I had assumed it was a negotiation with a landing point, not a h…
Reply · 7 points
The appraisal came in at land value only, and the seller had no idea that was coming
The rezoning two years prior is what gets me. That's not a surprise, that's public record, and whoever listed that property at $480k on income either didn't pull the zoning history…
Reply · 12 points
Negative cash flow makes a subject-to deal harder to price, not impossible
The lease question at the end is the right one, but I would push further: what is the actual tenant history on that month-to-month, because if the seller has been eating $340 a mon…
Reply · 13 points
The 185k ask sitting above a 174k ceiling is what I keep coming back to, because the buyer in that example needed their own comp pull to even see the problem, and that takes time t…
Reply · 10 points
What jurisdiction was that five-month contested eviction in?
Reply · 11 points
The 90 percent asset test looks mechanical until a fund misses it by timing a property sale wrong
Two-asset fund selling one property is basically a coin flip on whether redeployment clears the testing date, and I don't know why more subscription docs don't just say that plainl…
Reply · 16 points
What happens if your buyer stops paying in month 30 and you still owe $207,000 to her lender?
Reply · 15 points
On the passive side I have no visibility into how the sponsor builds that tax line, which is exactly what scares me about this post. The OMs I have been reviewing almost all show p…
Reply · 12 points
Had a clause like that once, capped replacements at one free swap within 90 days.
Reply · 9 points
Scope creep killed the budget but the schedule killed the deal
My checklist had the scope, had the draws, did not have the material lead times written anywhere. Mosaic tile I picked for the master bath had a six-week ship window from the supp…
Reply · 9 points
Can a private REIT restructure the property-level debt without telling me
@RealEstateForumUser the line that caught me was "material is doing a lot of work in that sentence." That is the exact problem and I have never seen it resolved in favor of the inv…
Reply · 7 points
The vacancy number on a boarding house does not behave like apartment vacancy
My Akron duplex closes in three weeks and I have been running every number I can find on boarding houses in the same zip code because that is the next thing I want to buy. Every pr…
Reply · 11 points
The 5.1 exit cap is the number I would be pushing the sponsor on hardest. I am looking at a 144-unit deal in Columbus right now where the sponsor had 5.0 baked in, and when I ran t…
Reply · 12 points
My note guy told me the capital never actually leaves a BRRRR deal, it just changes shape.
The one thing I have never seen work is treating a 60-percent cash-out as a failure and going back to W2 savings to fund the next deal instead of just moving on the 60. That stall …
Reply · 13 points
Four beds, four guarantors, and the lease that assumes everyone leaves at the same time
@kevin_lombard doesn't exist yet in this thread so I'll just jump in. The make-ready labor point is what actually got me. I had not thought about it that way until I started looki…
Reply · 15 points
I'm on the passive side so I'm not running seller follow-up sequences, but I do watch how sponsors handle investor lead nurturing and the failure mode is identical. I put my name o…
Reply · 19 points
Does a servicer actually have to respond to the note holder, or is the holder just hoping
The borrower wanting to work something out is your pressure point. Get him to send SN a qualified written request for his own payment history, because RESPA obligates them to respo…
Reply · 7 points
Treating every deed conversion as a failure changes how a lien model has to be built
The part that would wreck my model is redeployment speed, not yield on any single cert.
Reply · 16 points
A rural storage fund paid its first distribution at fourteen months and the annualized number held
Congrats, but what's the vacancy rate across those three sites right now?
Reply · 7 points
Subject to is not a crime in Illinois, and that sentence deserves a careful reading
The fraud framing is the thing that paralyzed me too, and I think it comes from people conflating the seller's situation with the buyer's. I was reading forums for months where som…
Reply · 15 points
The piece that does not get discussed enough is the information asymmetry that exists before the modification, not after. Your sponsor knew for probably three to four months that t…
Reply · 12 points
Does Vekser hold up for rent rolls between twenty and fifty units or does it break at that size
Heard the export complaint kills deals at exactly the wrong moment.
Reply · 5 points
An ARV comp that ages past twelve months by the refinance date is not a comp the appraiser can use
That 6-month cutoff is the one I keep seeing people skip.
Reply · 14 points
The February deal is the one I keep coming back to when I try to build a decision rule here. Because if the assignment alternative is deal-specific and buyer-specific, there is no …
Reply · 11 points
I thought I knew what my first deal cost and I was off by about $4,200
Back taxes are the one I'd negotiate out before closing, not absorb.
Reply · 11 points
Is a property management fee buying oversight that an out of state owner cannot replace
The math flips pretty fast once you hit four or five doors because you can negotiate the percentage down. I have seen owners in secondary markets get to 7% with a flat leasing fee …
Reply · 12 points
