jjbrr

dbl 4♥ and pick a slam. 6♣ now

2♥

agree, double was the problem.

I think if you double you will almost always go minus unless partner sits. At least if you pass, sometimes you go plus.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/36999483 It's having effects across seas, too :P

matmat's ratio would be N/A since i've never seen him play. I can confirm that matmat has played at least once.

Yes, I believe FHA eligible. 4 units is still residential; 5 units or more is commercial. Commercial is an entirely different kettle of fish (they generally require 20% down at least, which is prohibitive, among other problems). AFAIK income properties are not disqualified. Your second paragraph is my line of thought as well.

Phil: I understand your point. Here is an example of a property I'm looking at right now with some research I've done: The owner is about 80 and his mailing address is at a retirement home. He's owned the property I'm looking at for at least 10 years and hasn't raised the rent in at least the last 6 or 7 years. Similar homes in the neighborhood are charging $200-300 more/unit than this owner is charging. He seems to own a few properties and they're all on the market right now, so it seems to me he's been doing this for a while and is ready to cash in and not worry about managing the properties anymore. The location is pretty decent, imo, and it's zoned for one of the best elementary schools in the Dallas area. The duplex is occupied - one of the tenants is month to month; the other is under contract for the next half a year or so. The month to month tenant has a dog and a cat; the other tenant has young children. Since one method of evaluating the value of a multi-family residential unit is it's annual gross income, imo a quick paint job and new carpet will be enough excuse to raise the rent to the same level as that of comparable units in the neighborhood, which will increase the expected income and thus increase the value. You can LOL all you want, but my current roommate works in IT and gets $30/month from the lady in the next apartment over to mooch off our wireless internet. I agree people won't be discerning about a lot of things, but they do assign some value to things like not having to worry at all about a plan with an internet provider. Do you think my apartment complex's managers would LOL if they knew they were missing out on $30/month extra? Anyway, this is an example of a case where IME my strategy will be quite effective. In other cases I totally agree with what you said. I don't expect to get into properties that need major renovations or improvements, but instead properties that just need some cosmetic improvements. Perhaps after building a network of reliable people who can do substantial repairs I can look into flipping houses, but for now I'd prefer shying towards keeping my hands off.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Commercial-Property-Forced-Appreciation---The-Basics&id=873842 All the research I've done suggests that paint, new carpet, maybe some new tile, maybe some landscaping are enough of an excuse to raise rent. Obviously lots of factors go into it. If the rent is already high, I can't force them higher without substantial improvements. But if the rent is on the low end, these are simple things to get them where they should be.

Why? I think housing prices correlate directly with rent. In fact, property value is a direct function of lease. Have you heard of that "housing bubble" that happened not all too long ago? :D It included an atypically high P/E ratio for real estate. Ya, the book that was linked earlier is from ~2006, so it doesn't mention any of the troubles of the past couple years. Not an insignifcant problem. I'd be interested to know how the jump in foreclosures affected the demand for rental units. Also, if anyone has a crystal ball or can contact Ms. Cleo for me, I'd like to know how the market will look in the next 5+ years.

That's the outfit that I went with yesterday for Cinco de Mayo as well. It looks better on me imo.

- Units in posh suburbs seem like an unattractive market to me. It seems to me that the likely demographic to rent a unit in a duplex is either university-aged students looking for all the features of a home but at the cost of an apartment or young-ish families using the duplex as a way out of apartments and towards a house. The people who can afford to rent an expensive unit in a posh suburb are good candidates to buy a house rather than rent. This is, of course, dependent on location, as a posh beach-front rental unit would receive more attention and have more room for appreciation than a comparable unit in a nice neighborhood in Dallas, for example. I expect to stay far away from bad neighborhoods and downtown in general, unless I can find an area with lots of growth potential. Despite what everyone believe, I expect, I don't actually have any connections in criminal gangs, so that's not really a hassle or a risk I'm willing to endure. Perhaps somewhere down the line when I can afford to hire someone to manage the properties for me, that will be a more reasonable option. - The legal stuff is all very confusing to me. I'm not sure I'll ever get my head wrapped around everything involved, but I think I can recognize a red flag when I see it; recently I was looking at a property fo which I learned that, if I were to purchase it, I wouldn't be able to evict the occupants or increase the rent for one of the units in the event of any domestic violence against one of the female tenants. Dealing with potentially violent drunks does not sound like something I want to get myself involved with. - Indeed, I need to network extensively. Just like most thigns in life, I think to be successful in this area, who you know is as important or more important than what you know.

tequila. margaritas.

Why? I think housing prices correlate directly with rent. In fact, property value is a direct function of lease.

I'm flattered you think my opportunity cost of raging with a NY gal is >0 I admit I had dismissed that possibility lest I could get lots of help from NYers getting work at the clubs at least once/day.

Bottom line? Yea or nay? Assume I won't endure the buy and hold method, and rather I will try to refinance, reappraise, and hope to sell in X years where X is substantially shorter than the 30 yr mortgage.

Having a whole floor of your own in a two-family home is more attractive than a unit in an apartment building. So not only are they easier to rent, but you can probably ask for more in the rental rate. Are they easier to rent? Rent is cheaper in a 4 unit than a 2. Obv I can ask for more in a duplex than a quad. I can afford a lot more sq ft/unit in a duplex than quad. 10% down on a quarter million is a lot different from 10% on a half million for a 23 year old.

Is this true? That seems counter-intuitive to me and it goes against what my research suggests. Suppose the average rate of unoccupancy of some rental is 5%. If you're renting a single, you should expect to eat 1 in 20 monthly payments. If you have a triplex and offer 2 units for lease, it seems the 5% would be the same, and it would offer a little more protection. 3 units up for lease would offer even more protection. I'm no math wiz, and questioning this sort of logic is exactly what I need. Where did I go wrong? Do you just think people are less likely to rent a unit in a quad than a triplex? A unit in a triplex than a duplex?

The company I work for specializes in risk, so the concept isn't foreign to me. My undergraduate education was in business, so I have a very fundamental understanding of financial risk. What sort of risk do you think I'm looking at? The whole idea that a 5% average unoccupancy rate is subject to some standard deviation and that if I hit rough times I will certainly go bankrupt is something I totally understand. As far as I know, every argument I've heard about bankruptcy has been along the lines of that if I'm going to go bankrupt at some point in my life, there is no better time to do it than now, given that I have plenty of time to recoup my retirement fund and I have plenty of opportunities to get my money back and more. Obviously I have some risk aversion; I'm not jlall after all. But at the end of the day I'm just wondering if anyone has any insight into the risk I would be taking if I pursued this endeavor. Is it a good gamble if I have the right skill set?

I've heard a lot of persuading arguments about why it would be sort of silly for me not to seriously consider this. The only persuading argument I've heard that I should avoid this was from Dave Ramsey at a lecture he did a year or so ago. I guess he went bankrupt at 26 after he invested in real estate and the banks wanted more payment on his loans than he could afford, though I don't recall the details. He advocates avoiding credit as much as possible for someone like me.

Yes, I read it :P It gave me the idea. Edit: I mean my goal isn't really to become a baller real estate tycoon in Orlando like the author, but I think I'm in a good position where I can be successful in this area because of the fact I have money saved that I can use to invest and because I have a job that allows me some degree of flexibility to take a little bit of time off to take the necessary time to manage a property. Obv Dallas has one of the lowest appreciation rates in the country, but it's a stable market and the occupancy rates seem pretty safe to me.

So I know the bridge world is full of people much smarter, wiser, and more mature than I ever hope to be, so I'd like to defer to your judgment on a topic I'm considering pursuing quite seriously. Any advice, insight, or experiences you can share I would find pretty valuable. Background: I've been doing a lot of research lately about investing in multi-family residential properties. The general premise of the scheme is that I can buy a 2-4 unit property (duplex, triplex, quad) and live in one unit while leasing out the rest of the units. If everything works out, I put down the down payment, make cosmetic renovations to all the units, increase the rent slightly to reflect the improvements if necessary, and hopefully use the cash flow generated from the tenants' lease to pay for the mortgage. Long term the goal is more or less to own the property outright using none of my own money except the down payment. Alternatively, I can make the cosmetic changes and increase the rent (increasing the property value) and refinance after a year and use the appreciation and increase in value towards a down payment on another building; dry, rinse, repeat. My question: Does anyone have any experience in real estate? I understand that a successful investor will consider things like location and appreciation potential, but I'm curious about strategies to find houses with good potential. I assume this is a skill just like any other, and practice and experience with some degree of natural talent will lead to success. Surely there are things that one should look for, some red flags, some things that reduce risk substantially, etc. Assuming I've done my homework, is this something you recommend? I keep reading stories of "If only I had started in my twenties...", but for someone who has never taken out a loan for anything (free ride at college, bought a car with cash, currently renting an apartment), it's a pretty big leap to spend a quarter million on a house I would plan to only spend a year in.

i would be interested in reading and participating in such a thread, fwiw.

♥ Danish Gambit Using it against someone who has never seen it before is so awesome. They think you're a drooler and then they realize they're about to get carved like a turkey.

I actually think this is a good topic. I haven't talked about auctions after 1NT in this position with anyone, and I admit I would have defaulted to the agreement "systems on over 2♣ and dbl by NT openers and NT overcalls." Obviously in theory this is inferior to something like what MikeH is proposing, but I'd be a little surprised to learn that this would be standard in a pickup partnership of experts.