The spreadsheet is designed to help you analyze an apartment purchase. It is not a perfect predictor of what you should pay or what price guarantees your success. But, it is designed to help you make sure the metrics meet your criteria and help you weed out the less desirable properties under consideration.

This is a topic that comes up a lot when talking with real estate investors. Sooner or later they realize that they are limited in what they can do with conventional financing options. Even if they make the move to business credit lines they soon find they are again limited in how fast they can react to the once in a lifetime deals that seem to come along every week. They have been worshiping at the FICO alter and have good scores but still find that good scores does not equate to unlimited funding. Eventually they find themselves wanting to explore other options.

The Stock Market is more liquid than some of the other equity markets because there are 'market makers' who are required to make sure trades happen. They are responsible for buying when there are no buyers and selling when there are no sellers. This is handled through a complex network of brokerage and clearing houses.

When you buy a stock, bond, mutual fund or other instrument from your broker it is usually held in 'street name' meaning no stock certificate is issued by the company in your name. You can elect to have them issued to you, in your name but to sell them, pledge them or use them in any way with any kind of option strategy you have to surrender them back to the broker to be put back into 'street name'.

Generating enough sustainable spendable income is the goal of many who enter the real estate investing market. With single family homes and even duplexes, triplexes and quads this is much harder than even the numbers suggest. But, with multifamily properties, the almost impossible becomes doable. 

If your negotiating counterpart likes to talk, let them.

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All asset markets move in cycles. Whether you are talking about stocks, bonds, indentures or real estate. Some of these cycles are confined to geographic areas like real estate while others like stocks know few if any geographical boundaries. They cyclical nature of these markets does not mean sometimes they go up and sometimes they go down. It is better to think of it more as an "interest" cycle. The parts of the cycle are not uniform. For example, it may take several years for interest to reach a peak only to fall back to the bottom in a few months, weeks or even days.

Buying commercial multifamily properties is different than buying a single family home or a small non-commercial multifamily. A commercial multifamily is defined as more than 5 units and is usually in an area zones for apartments and offices. Yeah, I know, no duh, huh?

However, I started this way because many think the biggest difference is just the size of the deal. Not even close. Yes, the numbers are bigger but every other aspect is different too.

During any negotiation, you are going to be faced with the other side using many of these tactics, you will need to use them as well. In each of these, I discuss the tactic, show you when and how to use it and just as importantly, how to counter it.