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Jun

30

Cash Flow vs. Appreciation

June 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment

As promised, I’m going to devote a couple posts to the financial aspects of owning single family houses…
The first question you should be asking if you’re planning on getting into the business of owning rental houses is, “How do I make money?” While the answer may seem straightforward, there is actually a good bit […]

Jun

27

Evaluating Single Family Houses

June 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment

I’ve gotten some good feedback on my past couple posts…apparently there are some folks out there reading my blog who either are — or are interested in — getting into the business of investing in single family houses (SFH). While I’ve already created a primer for performing financial analysis of apartment buildings, I thought I […]

Jun

26

SFH Investment Analysis (Part 2)

June 26, 2008 | 3 Comments

In my previous post, I laid the groundwork for completing a pro-forma financial analysis for a potential business focused on buying, rehabbing, and holding/renting single family houses. An earlier post defined a hypothetical, yet realistic scenario for acquiring these properties, and my previous post defined the assumptions around my expected business model, revenue, costs […]

Jun

25

SFH Investment Analysis (Part 1)

June 25, 2008 | 2 Comments

As long as I’ve now sidetracked into discussing the possibilities of helping my fiancee start a single family home (SFH) investing business, and now that I’ve laid out what a typical investment scenario might look like in this market, I might as well take the analysis to the next level, and determine whether the financials […]

Jun

24

Rehab & Rent Example

June 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment

In my last post, I discussed the idea of putting together a business around buying distressed properties, rehabbing them, renting them, and then selling them for a profit when the market improves. To clarify what the business model might look like for this type of endeavor, I want to outline a hypothetical […]

Jun

23

Investing in Single Family Houses

June 23, 2008 | 2 Comments

Last week, my fiancee and I started driving around parts of west Atlanta looking at apartment buildings and apartment complexes that are currently on the market. While I enjoy checking out potential properties, my fiancee loves it! After years of watching HGTV, she is obsessed with the idea of rehabbing and flipping houses. […]

Jun

20

Lang & Thomas

June 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment

After years of management gigs for companies such as Microsoft and eBay, I’d have to say that I have a strong enough set of technical and business skills that I can accomplish many of the things I set my sights on. Unfortunately, the one place where I don’t believe my skills measure up to […]

Jun

19

Rich or Wealthy?

June 19, 2008 | 2 Comments

Do you make a distinction between being rich and being wealthy? Most people probably don’t, but if you’re going to invest in real estate (or anything for that matter), I think it’s important that you consider the differences and decide which is your goal.
That said, how do I define the difference between being “rich” […]

Jun

18

2008 Apartment Market Overview

June 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Marcus & Millichap today published their 2008 National Economic and Apartment Market Overview & Outlook…
Some very good information in here, including various economic overviews (support for whether we are at a housing bottom or not (hint: not), relationships of various economic indicators to the RE sector, data indicating the likelihood of an upcoming technical recession, […]

Jun

17

Why Cap Rate is Important

June 17, 2008 | 1 Comment

While I have devoted an entire section of this website to financial analysis of real estate, there are some financial concepts that I feel are of broad enough importance/interest that I want to post them in the main blog. Discussion of capitalization rate (or “cap rate”) is one of those such topics. I […]

Jun

16

What is a Fair Price?

June 16, 2008 | 4 Comments

My dad called me the other day…he was reading my blog and following my real estate adventure, and was curious about something:
When you’re new to buying apartments, how can you confidently determine a reasonable price for a particular property?
Surprisingly, it’s quite simple (it often requires a lot of work, but it’s not complicated). […]

Jun

14

Lish Properties Business Plan

June 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment

For anyone who hasn’t been following, but might be interested, I have finished the (publicly available) version of the Business Plan for Lish Properties.
Feel free to take a look, and I’d love any feedback or suggestions (either in comments or via email)…
Thanks!

Jun

13

Leveraging Outside Investments

June 13, 2008 | 2 Comments

For several reasons (diversification, help with financing, etc), I’ve decided that I will open up my real estate investments to friends and family who are potentially interested in having an equity stake in my investments. When the situation arises that I have equity partners in a deal, I will certainly spend some time with […]

Jun

12

Equity & Financing Strategy

June 12, 2008 | 2 Comments

Well, I’m almost done with my business plan. One of the last two sections I need to address is my Equity and Financing Strategy. Because of the disastrous situations I’ve been reading about the past year in light of the subprime mortgage mess, it’s even more top-of-mind these days how important a smart […]

Jun

11

Lish Properties, LLC

June 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment

A couple weeks back, I hired a law firm here in Atlanta to handle the incorporation (actually, organizing the LLCs) of both my real estate company and my fiancee’s communications company. The firm was tremendously professional and had the filings completed within a week. We just received our official notices of LLC organization, […]

Jun

10

2008 National Apartment Report

June 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment

For anyone interested in apartment investing, I wanted to point out one of the best resources I’ve come across on the web. Marcus & Millichap, one of the largest real estate investment services firms in the U.S., publishes a number of quarterly and annual reports on their website. The one that I have […]

Jun

9

Criteria for Investment Location

June 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment

I’ve written a bit about real estate cycles and how to analyze real estate markets to determine if they may be a good place to invest. Using this information that I’ve put together, I’ve written the next section of my business plan:

LISH PROPERTIES BUSINESS PLAN

Criteria for Investment Location
As noted previously, the company will use […]

Jun

7

Analyzing Markets (Part 3)

June 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment

In my last post, I identified four of the major contributors to the real estate cycle. Now, let’s dig in and discuss more specifically how each of these factors influences real estate markets.
I’m going to refer again to the market cycle diagram I showed you in an earlier post:

It worth noting that […]

Jun

6

Analyzing Markets (Part 2)

June 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment

In my previous post, I kicked off the discussion of market analysis and the cyclical nature of real estate markets. In this post, I wanted to discuss some of the key market factors that contribute to market cycles, and then in my next post, I’ll discuss how each part of the cycle is influenced […]

Jun

5

Analyzing Markets (Part 1)

June 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment

This is the first of what will likely be many posts on the topic of Real Estate Market Analysis. The reason this topic will garner so much attention is because – in my opinion, at least – the ability to understand market trends and to analyze the state of real estate markets can be […]

Jun

4

WSOP 2008

June 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment

It’s been about a week and a half since we arrived in Atlanta, and we’re finally getting settled in our new place. While there are a million things I want to do around the house, in preparation for our wedding, and with the businesses, I think it’s important that I take advantage of the […]

Jun

3

Criteria for Investment

June 3, 2008 | 2 Comments

A big decision that every investor needs to make is, “What are the specific criteria that I’m going to use to decide whether a particular investment is good enough to make?” Just because an investment is going to likely generate some profit doesn’t necessarily make it an investment worthy of your time. For […]

Jun

2

Investment Strategy (Part 2)

June 2, 2008 | 4 Comments

My last post kicked off the discussion about the various strategies that I plan to use for my investing. I included the first half of the “Investment Strategy” section of my Business Plan, which covered “Fundamental Investments.”
Below I continue with that section of my Business Plan, adding detail about the other type of investing […]

Jun

1

Investment Strategy (Part 1)

June 1, 2008 | 2 Comments

I’ve been working on my business plan the past couple of days, and it has required me to take all the information I’ve been gathering and considering over the past several months and finally decide what specific real estate strategies I’m going to pursue. Once I decided on multi-unit properties (apartments) as my preferred […]