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John Piu's avatar

This is great info. Thanks for putting it together.

SEC registration sounds like a big detractor, especially for smaller deals, to do syndications. I know there's several items that make a difference in the aggregate cost of setting this up (number of state registrations, number of investors, etc), but do you have a benchmark in terms of size of deal when this starts to make sense? For example, I know this won't make sense for a 500k, but for a 2M purchase? 5M? etc.

Also, is this something that can be done by a one man show + tools such as verify investor and external resources such as lawyers? I'm guessing it requires a team or the admin work will kill you.

Lastly, do you use any tools/systems/services for reporting?

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Real Estate Simpleton's avatar

There's no benchmark relative to size. If you have investors, it must be done to be legal.

A one man show can easily do this process. It really isn't complicated at all. You do need a lawyer to do all this properly.

For financials, I use Quickbooks Desktop (can actually be set up for real estate quite well) and then automated reporting that integrates called Reach Reporting. I'm not big enough yet to justify the cost of Yardi or the other bigger platforms.

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John Piu's avatar

Beautiful. This makes sense and it helps a lot. Very good to know that it can be done by yourself. Will take a look into Quickbooks Desktop and Reach Reporting.

Regarding registration, I think I was not clear with my question. I understand and agree that it must be done the legal way. So, since this is a given, the question was whether there is a point at which you determine it is just not worth it to do a deal with investors and decide to either (a) find a bigger deal or (b) provide the equity yourself.

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Real Estate Simpleton's avatar

Ah, got it. I like to buy bigger-ish stuff with investors (but I'm the largest interest) to reduce the risk a bit (non-recourse vs recourse lending) and improve the operational economies of scale. Small stuff like 6 unit buildings or whatever can make great money, but scaling up is harder and more operational work to manage a bunch of small stuff vs one bigger property (maybe >50 units or whatever big is to that person).

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John Piu's avatar

Great, thanks for the reply!

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