Introduce Myself
Hello. I was on this forum many years ago under a different username before I ever purchased a property.
My focus in multi-family, mainly in upstate NY but now am entering new markets. I am bit with the bug and multi-family is my sweet spot.
I love marketing and seem to have a nack for it. My response rates have been above average for the most part. I am excited to become an active member on this board.
-Chris
Welcome back. What parts of upstate NY are you investing in?
Syracuse area
I recently did my term paper on this topic for my marketing class. I struggled for a topics until I found an article about the financial difficulties that the New World Trade Centers would encounter. This lead me to investigate the commercial real estate crisis. It is interesting.
I am not sure how to take advantage of the opportunity exactly. Ideally, I would think the best thing to do would be to buy and hold until the economy and the market began to show signs of improvement. As jobs increase, and small businesses begin appearing the demand for commercial real estate will increase. On the other hand, if you are business savvy then the best opportunity would be to locate failing businesses buy the business and the property or take over the loan...revive the business and then sell it on owner financing for cash flow.
Any other thoughts?
What have your returns been?
I have been wanting to diversify with my Mothers IRA money a little more with this.
I started out picking individual borrowers, but migrated to a portfolio approach. I found myself spending lots of time... too much time... finding borrowers. Even though I liked the "hunt", I decided to make a larger number of small loans using their automated portfolio feature. I set up the parameters, and they automatically put in bids.
The collections part is the responsibility of Prosper. I get to choose the collection firm from their list, but it is against the rules for me to make direct contact with the borrower.
Worth it? I would say yes because I joined as a lender to help people who otherwise had little chance of borrowing from a traditional source, especially people with relatively modest borrowing needs who could/would get a big boost with (collectively) peer-to-peer lenders. Prosper is good for this kind of lending.
i have been playing with prosper. I only have 12 loans over the last two year and my average is 24% but I have lent to c and lower to help them out. Knock on wood everyone paying.