Advice Needed on Possible Investor Full Build Project

[Chanté Owens]

Ok, I know my limitations and as a first venture into RE investing, this isn't anything that I could do; however, I know of at least 3-4 investors that could potentially be interested in this; however, there is a tremendous amount of due diligence I would need to do, before I brought it to them to view.

Unfortunately, I saw this property about 6-8 weeks ago, and I looked it up, and saw that it was owned by what looked like an investment holding company of some sort. It appeared (mind you, I am still learning so I could be wrong on this) they paid around $209,000 for this property. I meant to contact one of my RE friends who is also an investor to see if this is something we could get under contract and possibly either she could purchase as a buy and hold or flip, or sell to someone else. Now, it's listed, so I missed my opportunity to make a offer before they listed it. From what I recalled when I looked everything up on the assessors website, the company who purchased it, had it for some time

The property info:

It is a house that I knew from first blush would DEFINITELY be a scrape and rebuild potential, as it looks wretched. Likely a down to studs thing (just from me viewing from the outside).

-Small property about 1200 sq ft or so (as I mentioned rough condition and would likely be torn down)

-Listed at 300k

-Lot area 20,000 sf ft

Here's where it gets interesting, and I need the help to figure out what an offer would look like. It appears that they have worked with the city where this property is listed, to re-establish two building lots. There is a wetlands issue that would need to be mitigated; however, there are now two parcels listed that the investor would have and could build on both of the parcels.

-Pricing for properties in this area and in the 1-2 mile radius are all over the place, but seem to comfortably rest in that $349,000-400,000 range for a decent 3bd/2bth property with age ranges of properties around the 1950's to 1970'ish range. Mind you, there are some properties that are much more expensive and there are some condos that are listed in the area around $155-190k'ish range (built around that 70's-80's range).

My question is how to determine how much it would cost to build to completely new properties, and how would those be comped out, as there doesn't appear to be a lot of new builds this area; however, I know of some new builds that are going up in the city next to it, which will be starting in the $450k range, and that's approximately 3-5 miles away; if that.

I appreciate any advice you may have. I'd love to be able to get an investor who'd want to build out both properties. I'd be able to assist in the project management, and I have access to quite a few good GC's and specialty artisans (ie, tile, roofers, etc) that could be subbed for the project; however, I don't know (personally) anything about new builds here in WA State.

Thanks for any input in advance!

[Josh Caldwell]

Let me see if I follow the math here, becuase that is the only part that matters

You can buy the property for 300k and tear down the crappy house, and have 2 building lots, that could potentially have AVR of 450k, so 900k total.  Is that a correct summary of the current deal?

Now on to step two, find a builder and ask this question.  If I partner with you, what will it cost to build two houses on this property? That answer + the 300k to buy the lot - the cost to build two houses is your potential profit.  Thus ends the academic exercise.

Now back to the real world, dont do this deal unless you get help from a seasond investor in your area.  There are way too many things that could go wrong, and a new investor is not prepared to deal with them. This is not a good starter deal

Alternate strategy.  get the property under contract and flip it to another investor with the caveat that the buyer will teach you how to do the building part of this deal. Use an option contract so that if you cant find a buyer you dont lose a pile of money here

To your success

Josh