Investomation

One common strategy for busy professionals wanting to get real estate exposure in remote markets without the time commitment real estate typically requires is to invest in turnkey properties, where developer sells the property with a tenant and property management company already in place. But how well do these investments work in practice?

https://investomation.com/blog/the-ugly-truth-about-turnkey-real-estate

When I first got started with real estate, one of the hardest hurdles to entering remote markets was finding a good PM. PM usually takes 10% of gross rents for their service, which ends up closer to 50% of net rents once you subtract all the expenses (mortgage, taxes, insurance, utilities, repairs) and you're completely at their mercy as a remote investor if they suck. In this post I cover the strategy I usually use for screening them.

https://www.investomation.com/blog/how-to-find-a-good-property-manager

The BRRR strategy gets talked about a lot in real estate, it's simple on paper, kind of like the saying of "buy low, sell high", except that you never sell and just keep taking out more loans against your assets. Some people see that as risky as you could end up underwater in a downturn. In this article I explain how to mitigate that risk.

https://investomation.com/blog/brrr-a-cool-strategy-for-hot-markets

While there are a lot of things wrong with Massachusetts housing regulations that earn it a very negative reputation among landlords, there are also some hidden gems like the recently revamped RAFT program, which I cover here.

https://investomation.com/blog/landlord-s-guide-to-raft

Here is an example of a home that was recently sold here in Boston, where I live. On the surface, there is nothing special about this home, yet it stirred up an aggressive bidding war and was sold significantly above asking, all because the seller agent is a pro at what he does. He leveraged his competitive advantage. The winning buyer, on the other hand, got played. In this blog post I cover the details of what happened and explain the importance of using YOUR competitive advantage to get more bang for the buck in life and how to avoid getting played.

https://investomation.com/blog/use-your-competitive-advantage

I recently added an analytics panel to the Investomation app, which allows one to see the demographic trends of an individual location over time and compare it to any other location within US.

https://investomation.com/blog/using-analytics-panel-to-inspect-real-estate-trends

In my last post, I spoke about the factors that influence self-storage demand. In this post I walk through a concrete example I recently analyzed using Investomation that seemed like a good deal at first but I ultimately ended up dismissing due to red flags that came up in my research.

https://investomation.com/blog/how-to-analyze-self-storage-demand-part-2

This post came out of personal notes I took on the subject while researching self-storage facilities and improving my app's functionality for this use case. In particular, finding demand and calculating sqft/capita is something Investomation simplifies compared to doing that analysis by hand:

https://investomation.com/blog/how-to-analyze-self-storage-demand