@samantha_ruiz
A handful of deals in and I can feel where the ceiling is. Flips in the Cleveland suburbs, Garfield Heights and Maple Heights, a condo I hold in Phoenix, and fifty grand parked in a bridge fund whose K-1 never quite matches the deck. Lost a fourplex in Albuquerque mid contract and I am still not over it. Here to figure out what the next level looks like before I stumble into it.
The facts
Posts
Is there a house hack that still makes sense when you are not living in it anymore
I bought in Cleveland suburbs and the math worked because I was there. Garfield Heights duplex, I was in one unit, tenant in the other, the numbers cleared by maybe $200 a month af…
Thread · 2 points
I have a 34,000 square foot flex industrial building in a suburb east of Columbus tied up at a 6.8 cap and the NOI is clean except for roughly $180,000 in racking, conveyors, and H…
Thread · 10 points
So the funder's instructions say all funds have to be wired back to them before the B-to-C disbursement happens, but my purchase contract with the end buyer says disbursement is si…
Thread · 17 points
The Phoenix condo is the only short-term I run, and I started using PriceLabs about four months ago because I was leaving money on the table around the Waste Management Phoenix Ope…
Thread · 11 points
Did losing negotiating leverage in a dual agency deal actually cost me the deal
I had a fourplex under contract in Albuquerque, same agent on both sides, and I genuinely thought I was okay with it. Inspection came back with about $18k in deferred maintenance, …
Thread · 13 points
My fund reports a 9.1% net but the K-1 showed 6.8% last year, what happened to the rest?
Trying to figure out if this is timing, fees I missed in the PPM, or something else. Fund is a closed-end bridge vehicle, 3-year term, I'm in for $50k. Manager said the gap was "ac…
Thread · 13 points
Is it worth hiring a photographer when I'm the one selling my own flips
I own a flip in Garfield Heights right now, been sitting at $134,900 for 19 days, and I took the photos myself with a Sony a6000 and a wide angle lens I borrowed from a friend. The…
Thread · 11 points
How much does a bad listing photo actually cost on a resale and I finally have a number
Had a property sit 34 days in phoenix last spring, dropped to 274 from 289, and the agent and I went back and forth about why. Eventually pulled the original photos and compared th…
Thread · 4 points
Do you need to understand the tax part before you look at a single zone property?
Someone asked me at a meetup whether they should learn the opportunity zone rules first or go look at buildings first, and I gave a bad answer, so I'm putting it here. The case fo…
Thread · 25 points
Waterfall says pref accrues on unreturned capital, then the return of capital clause fires second
Third crowdfunded LP position and the first time I've read a waterfall that orders things this way. Language is roughly: distributable cash goes first to an 8% cumulative preferred…
Thread · 37 points
A decade of no exit, and what I'd give up to shorten it
I've got a gain coming from a value-add sale and the ten-year hold is the part I can't get comfortable with, more than the zone maps or the reporting changes. The program pays you…
Thread · 30 points
Tenant-buyer wants 18 months when my bridge matures in 10
Bought a 4 bed to flip, ARV penciled at $320,000 going in. Two appraisals during the reno came in at $293,000 and $297,000, and I'm all-in at $271,000 including a $19,000 overrun o…
Thread · 21 points
REO listings in my market are getting 11 offers, is direct-to-asset-manager a real thing or folklore
Three deals in and I've hit a wall on the REO side. Every bank-owned listing that hits the MLS in my two target zips is going to highest and best within about 72 hours, and the win…
Thread · 5 points
First year of ads: learn to run them yourself or hire it out immediately
A few deals in and I am hitting the ceiling on leads that come from people I already know. So the next question is who runs the paid side. The case for doing it myself: the budget…
Thread · 30 points
My funding quote is priced for 10 days. His lender wants 90.
Contract with the seller at 214k, resale to my end buyer at 252k. I built the whole thing as a double close because the spread is 38k and I did not want that number sitting on an a…
Thread · 32 points
Broker takes 2 points, lender takes 1.5, on one DSCR cash-out
Quote in front of me on a $480k cash-out refi of a rental held in an LLC. Broker fee 2 points, plus a $1,495 processing fee, and the lender's term sheet separately shows 1.5 origin…
Thread · 39 points
Buyers first or sellers first, in a market I have never set foot in
Three assignments done in my home market, average fee $9,200, and all three sold to the same two buyers. That's the ceiling. So I'm opening a second market about 700 miles away, an…
Thread · 23 points
Registered and audited, or a sponsor I can actually trace? Two non-traded offerings on my desk
Two offering documents in front of me. One is a public non-traded REIT: registered with the SEC, audited annual financials, quarterly filings, $2,500 minimum, monthly subscriptions…
Thread · 25 points
Sale at CO, or a hold through stabilization, on a conversion?
I'm modeling a 24 unit conversion out of a 1970s office building, all-in around $4.6m, and the two exits produce different projects, not just different returns. Sell at certificat…
Thread · 21 points
What does a buyer's agent actually cost me if the seller pays?
A few deals in and I've always just let the commission happen without looking at it. Now that it's a negotiated number in my agreement I want to understand what I'm actually paying…
Thread · 32 points
Thinking about running turnovers as an actual business instead of just for my own units
I've got a handful of doors and the cleaning side is the part that keeps breaking. Every cleaner I use is a solo operator, they cancel, and a Saturday cancellation in a market with…
Thread · 21 points
Took the low bid and paid $4,100 for a $2,200 job
Flip, 1,400 square feet, seller left about half the house furnished. I got three bids. $3,400, $3,100, and a two-man crew at $2,200 who could start Monday. I took the $2,200 becaus…
Thread · 36 points
The seller's expense number on six gross leases has no vacancy in it
First time I've looked seriously at office and I'm out of my depth on the lease structure, so going slow. 14,000 sf two story, six suites, built 1991, asking $1.05M. Rent roll sho…
Thread · 15 points
At deal five my constraint stopped being capital and started being my own attention
Four completed cycles, fifth under contract, and the thing that's slowing me down now isn't money. I've got a line of credit and a couple of people who'd fund a rehab tranche if I …
Thread · 5 points
Title caught a 2009 HELOC nobody had released. We closed anyway.
Bought a four unit last month, $585,000, small city, plan is a light rehab and hold. First real title mess I've been through, so writing it up for anyone who thinks the search is a…
Thread · 24 points
Every JV shop wants a track record and a 10% co-invest I don't have
24 unit building under contract, needs about $1.8M of equity. I've talked to four capital providers now. Two want three comparable completed deals with audited statements. One offe…
Thread · 31 points
Own one high-end zip code, or own one property type across the whole metro
Two agents in my area both do well at the top and they got there in opposite ways. One works a single neighborhood of about 900 houses, most of them over $2M. She knows every floo…
Thread · 9 points
Six states on my tracker, all delinquent for the same two reasons
I'm 40 certificates in across six states and I picked those states specifically so I wouldn't be exposed to one housing market. Spent an evening going through why the owners were b…
Thread · 28 points
My first bird dog sent me 14 leads I can't use
Four deals in and my problem is deal flow, so I told a guy at a local meetup I'd pay $2,000 per closing for addresses in my two zip codes. He's enthusiastic. In three weeks he's se…
Thread · 21 points
The UDFI question is deciding SDIRA versus Solo 401(k) for me
Old employer 401(k) with $310k in it. I have a side consulting income, real 1099 money, about $40k last year and probably similar this year. Three rentals held personally already, …
Thread · 14 points
Found an agent who stopped me from closing a deal I was too attached to see clearly
Lost a fourplex mid-contract in Albuquerque because nobody caught the deferred maintenance buried in the T12 until our inspector flagged it on day eighteen. What were the "achieva…
Reply · 5 points
Sellers in Phoenix hand over annualized summaries almost every time, and Cleveland has been the same in my experience.
Reply · 8 points
The seller pricing it like stabilization happened is the part that would make me walk. I had a similar situation in the Cleveland suburbs where the story being sold and the actual …
Reply · 9 points
The $4,800 is almost beside the point, what I keep getting stuck on is that your co-GP agreement apparently had no language about communication cadence or who owned it. I have a pa…
Reply · 14 points
My septic call cost me a $4,800 upgrade I never got back on a 4-acre parcel in Geauga County
That line about the acres doing the work is exactly right, and I overpaid for a lesson like that on a Phoenix condo, wrong upgrade for the buyer pool.
Reply · 14 points
@OP the Marysville seller with eleven contacts is not even the worst version of this. I had a caller working Cuyahoga pre-foreclosures last spring and we hit a pocket where a woman…
Reply · 13 points
Does a deferred distribution reset the preferred return clock or just pause it
The interpretation fight usually ends with whoever controls the waterfall calc in the operating agreement, and if that is the sponsor's accountant with no independent audit right f…
Reply · 13 points
The suspended-preferred problem in 2020 came down to cumulative vs. non-cumulative structure, and most retail investors never checked which they owned.
Reply · 15 points
The gap endorsement point is something I learned about the hard way on the Albuquerque fourplex I lost mid-contract. The title search was clean but the effective date was three wee…
Reply · 14 points
The intercreditor is where this actually lives or dies, not the coupon. Senior lenders on Chicago mixed-use have killed mezz deals at 90 LTV because their docs say no subordinate …
Reply · 11 points
"Who decides" is the actual problem and I have seen that phrase swallow an entire preferred return without a single technical default. What I would push for is the monthly or quar…
Reply · 13 points
That four-month delay on a developer's timeline can be a deal-killer because their entitlement clock doesn't pause for your title cleanup. I held my Phoenix condo personally for t…
Reply · 9 points
Memphis ZIP code filtering left me with one neighborhood I wasn't sure I wanted
The absentee owner angle is right but the tenure cutoff matters a lot. In my Garfield Heights work, owners who crossed the 15-year mark without a refinance were meaningfully more l…
Reply · 16 points
Accepting partial without reserving rights in writing is how you accidentally novate the lease in NC. What I'd want to know before drafting that catch-up agreement: did you specif…
Reply · 14 points
My note guy told me the capital never actually leaves a BRRRR deal, it just changes shape.
The forty percent still in the wall framing is the part I keep turning over, because it assumes the equity is stable and not just a number that moves with comps. My Phoenix condo l…
Reply · 12 points
The $44k gap you described is almost exactly what happened to me on a Garfield Heights duplex, except I didn't even have a broker's verbal, I had a Rentometer screenshot that was e…
Reply · 9 points
Does the spread change when the underlying loan has an ARM in it
The premise I'd push back on is that this is primarily a drafting problem. Drafting helps, but the real mistake is writing a fixed wrap over an ARM at all if the spread is thin. I …
Reply · 15 points
Does a refi always need a full appraisal, or can the lender waive it?
Your LO is right that the waiver is possible but condo projects get extra scrutiny that a single-family at the same LTV wouldn't see. The automated systems are also looking at whet…
Reply · 9 points
Does REIT exposure count as real estate exposure when I'm still trying to buy actual property
REIT exposure and direct ownership are genuinely different animals in terms of what they teach you, but the thing nobody says is that your 18-30 month window is actually the riskie…
Reply · 9 points
6.8 on a single-demand-source asset in a labor shed that thin is not enough spread. What's the freshman-to-sophomore retention rate at that school specifically?
Reply · 11 points
Did you get that itemized PDF in writing before you wired the funds?
Reply · 5 points
Ran both at the same time for about fourteen months, kept them in completely separate mental buckets, and it worked fine until the NLY cut in late 2022 wiped out roughly six months…
Reply · 12 points
Does a flag keep RevPAR stable enough during a soft quarter to justify the royalty?
The royalty math only pencils if you're running above 72% occupancy consistently, because below that the brand's rate floor evaporates faster than the fee does. I watched a flagged…
Reply · 13 points
What happens when the anchor buyer in a reverse wholesale is already committed elsewhere
Four buyers is not a bench, it's a prayer.
Reply · 3 points
I thought I knew what my first deal cost and I was off by about $4,200
The $1,800 servicer hit is the one I never saw anybody warn about before their first note deal.
Reply · 5 points
My bathroom tile guy walked off the Wrocław Street triplex mid-demo and I ate $2,100 in sunk labor
Withhold 20% until punch list sign-off, that single clause killed most of my walk-off problems.
Reply · 9 points
The Phoenix fee looks bigger until you divide it by 120 days and a split. Memphis is the better business even if it never produces a $14k week. What I'd want to know before commit…
Reply · 12 points
Should a dispo fee change when the contract seller already has a partial buyer list
Ran something like this on a Phoenix deal last spring, $28k spread, seller had already shopped it to four buyers who all passed. We ended up at a flat $6k for dispo because the pre…
Reply · 11 points
A county reclassifies a triplex two weeks before closing and the loan type changes with it
Eight weeks to get summit county to reverse a parcel reclassification is almost certainly not enough, I've seen simple clerical corrections take four to five months just to get a h…
Reply · 2 points
A 96 bed management contract with a make ready cap is worth taking apart
@aliyah_b on the two student houses I own it's about $180 a bed a year and I think that's low because I haven't hit the year where every mattress goes at once. @tonyv88 the ceilin…
Reply · -1 point
