Work with realtor/broker and find a good deal on mulitifamily?

I have been reading a few RE books on investing multifamily but never purchased one cause I haven’t found the right deal. The problem is, it seems what is explained on the books do not reflect real life, hard to implement, or I misunderstood many things because I am new in this area?

Here’s the thing:

  1. The books always tell that the buyer talk with the seller to find more info and negotiate about the property. My experience: Seller doesn’t want to talk to the buyers, OR, the realtors said it doesn’t work that way. They always said it is not common that seller meets buyer. I thought buying apartment is like buying a business where buyer always meets the seller?

  2. Someone told not go through realtors because the deal is usually bad. If the deal is good, the realtor/broker would take it before it goes to MLS. If not, trough realtors, how to find multifamily FSBO? I am not talking about duplexes here. at least I am looking for 6 unts or more. I know you can put ‘we buy house’ ad and get called by owners of duplexes. Does it work the same with commercial?

  3. The books mentioned getting deals from out of state. How do I get a deal from out of state? How do we know if it’s going to be good or not considering we don’t know the area? The broker, again broker would say it is good because they want commission, right? Then, once we bought out of state properties, how do we manage them? How do you know the property manager is honest, they could send me invoice for repair but nothing is get done! How do we know?

That’s it for now. But I will have more questions later because I need to get advice on a property I am interested in. But will do that in a separate thread.

E’

rkresnadi,

Many investors buy property without meeting the seller, however I would not personally. The best deals I have come across has always been when I contact the owner directly. That does not mean the Brokers or Realtors do not have good deals because they snatch them up before the go to MLS I have seen many deals through them that I wish I had jumped on faster.

IMHO The best way to locate Apartment sellers is to contact them directly with an unsolicited offer.

Due Dilligence is the only way to know if the deal is good, never rely on what a Realtor / Broker / Owner tells you about it. It is not because all would lie to you but because You Never Know Who Would.

As far as the managers go, you can expect all bad things to happen, but if you check up regularly on the property you should not have to many problems.

Richard Stephens