First deal and mold

[Daniel Florence]

Hello and thank you to anyone who's reading this! I'm somewhat new to real estate investing and so glad I found BP. I've been researching and reading as much as I can to make sure I start out in the right foot. I'm looking to make my first investment and found a property within 15 minutes of my home. It's an REO and needs almost zero rehab other than mold on the garage. The mold is on a side wall near the garage door and I'm meeting a remediation contractor to look at it next week. I'm torn with this one because I have no experience with mold and some say run for the hills while others say mold smells like $. The asking price is $209k and it's been on the market for almost 6 months. Similar homes in the neighborhood are selling for $220-$230. It's been on the market for 6 months and I'm thinking if I can make a cash deal for $150-$175k it could be very profitable. My question to the experienced investor is...would you walk away from a this deal because of mold? Would I be taking a big risk if this was the only rehab needed?

[Jake Hottenrott]

I did a mold deal and it wasn't that bad.  Was there sticker shock of down time, remediation cost and rebuild?  Yep.  Overall I offered a price that worked for me to make money in almost every scenario.  The property ended up being almost a 2% rule deal (1.78%).  Is this a fix and flip or a rental?

The key here is to have multiple bids for remediation and reconstruction.  Also, make sure you know the cause and how to fix it as well, otherwise you are in the same boat.  Water issues cause a lot of people to run, but if you know how to fix them you can make a lot of money off them.