patrick.net

I know that technically Arizona is in the United States but does it really count? No.

I know, I know, it's a dry heat.

Biff

Congrats. Building a small empire in Arizona is like winning the special Olympics.

That's a really good one, congrats.

Are you handling all 12 rentals by yourself (leases, taxes/paperwork, maintenance)? That sounds like a substantial commitment, unless you can get help from family or use a management company.

Maybe if you own enough rentals you can 1. buy a sports car 2. upgrade girlfriends from a retriever to a human.
Of course the chicks running around in that hell hole must be something else.
I guess it could be worse, you could be in Nogales, Juarez, Victoria, Monterrey Mex.

¿Dónde está el baño por favor?

When do you go public so I can buy shares?

clambo says

upgrade girlfriends from a retriever to a human.

I don't usually like to engage in the mud slinging, but this got a chuckle out of me.

I just invested more money into my 401k!!!!

Congradulations Roberto.

85K is a reasonable price for a property in a good location. I paid 91k for a city property in Dallas.

In my opinion, the closest similiarity to the Phoenix market here in Southern California is San Bernardino / Riverside and Long Beach.

Although, mulit units sell quickly anywhere.

Congrats! I'd like to build an portfolio of 10+ properties. Stuck on 4 right now and am not finding the deals I used to in the location that I'm used to investing.

I guess this is what the bottom looks like - investors buying up everything they can for cash since prices are at/below rental parity. Of course its a government manufactured frankenstein 'bottom' but it is what it is.

If prices keep going up Roberto can sell all 12 properties for twice what he paid, wait for crash, repeat.

Hey Roberto, where do you get the cash from to do this? Do you accumulate the rental income, which does sound like it is quite positive, and then reinvest it into more properties? This is more or less exactly how I played SimCity as a little kid lol...initial investment to get cash flow going, collect revenue to invest in more growth, reinvest revenue for more, etc, until cash flow is enough that I don't care anymore. I'm too much of a chicken to do it with my US Dollars though, as opposed to digital Simoleans (or whatever the currency was called in the game).

And what's with the hate posts? Yeah the guy's building a "rental empire." Apparently none of the haters want to live there anyway, so it isn't like he's preventing you from buying a house. Oh, it's people LIKE Roberto, right? Get over it, it's a capitalist system. Small investors like him are NOT the problem. The real problem is going to be the large institutional investors with the ability to rig the whole system that are trying to get their hands on the large shadow inventory for pennies on the dollar, and who will subsequently crush renters, existing home owners and small investors like Roberto.

So after all the hubris, when all's said and done, you're saying Roberto's strategy is fatally flawed....

bmwman91 says

and who will subsequently crush renters, existing home owners and small investors like Roberto.

I think he means 'crush' to mean 'get a better return' for example you buy in bulk from fannie mae 100 properties and flip them to clueless zero down FHA buyers for retail price.

Roberto has to compete with other buyers for deals- hes a regular guy.

xrpb11a says

So after all the hubris, when all's said and done, you're saying Roberto's strategy is fatally flawed....

Not necessarily. Nobody knows if the institutional investor doomsday scenario (IIDS) will actually happen. His strategy of "buy-to-rent" is no more flawed than any of ours to "buy-to-live-in" or "rent" because everyone will be fucked if IIDS comes to pass.

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(the rest is directed to the thread's readership in general)
I get that people like to hate on him because they are butt-hurt that they cannot afford a house, or are just unwilling to pay the prices on them in the SFBA (I am a renter in the latter category BTW). Get over it. Some people pump funds into mutual funds and 401k's, and some people bank on rental properties. People get way too emotional about this, and the butt-hurt flows strongly as a result.

Besides, the haters on here DO realize that he posts about this to egg you on, right? You play right into it. Some people's idea of a utopia is "a world where I buy the exact house that I want in the exact location I want for the exact price I want and nobody is in my way, especially nasty landlords," but it'll never happen. I'm a renter, and irritated at high prices around here, but I am not silly enough to think that some random guy on the internet that bought a whopping 12 houses in AZ is the reason that SFBA property is overpriced. Posting under a user name with a CA location, and flipping out over some guy in AZ is totally illogical.