Newbie from MN - Hello!

[Evan Uribe]

Hello everyone.
My name is Evan and I'm a relatively new investor located in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis, St. Paul), Minnesota.    I wanted to take a little time to introduce myself to the community and explain my background.

I run my own photography business called Lumen Photography.  My wife and I live off of my wife's income while using any income generated from my business to put towards investing in new real estate endeavors.

We currently owner-occupy a triplex in Minneapolis.  Here are the numbers on it:

• Purchase Price $315,000
• Unit 1 ($900), Unit 2 ($875), Unit 3 if we were to rent it out ($1200)
• Current monthly outlay including utilities, mortgage, escrow, etc:  $2185

At the moment we are near breaking even while living in the unit and expect to clear almost $800/month when we move on to our next property.

As of almost a month ago, we put an accepted offer (with the seller) in on a short sale duplex in a western suburb for $230,000.  We are waiting to hear back from the bank as to whether they'll authorize the short sale but are confident it will be because the price was preapproved by the bank holding the note.

It's a bit of a fixer upper and we are going in on the property with a  Homestyle renovation loan.  We plan on doing a new roof (current roof is shot), upper level windows, and electric breaker using the renovation loan.  With the estimates that we've gotten, the mortgage will most likely be around $250,000.  The comps in area range between $260,000 at the very lowest with an average around $290,000 and the high end of $320,000 plus.

I'm a handy guy who will be doing a lot of the work/sweat equity on the property to hopefully bring it up to the level of quality necessary to be on the high end of the comps.  We view this property as a short term hold (one year most likely) after which we are planning on selling the property and taking the equity that we gain and putting it towards our next deal.


I've created spreadsheets in excel for all my endeavors, my personal two favorites are:

• A sheet used to see whether a property is cash-flowing. It includes everything from mortgage prices to PMI to utilities and everything else inbetween. It's been priceless in regards to determining whether a deal is good.
• A new sheet I put together specifically for this short sale.  It's a renovation sheet that pulls prices for anything from sheet rock, to tile, to other items from home depot.  I plug in sq/ft necessary to redo and it gives me a very generalized number that I can expect to pay.  Also priceless.
  

Anyways, that's my experience in the real estate game so far.  I'm self-taught with a thirst for knowledge and networking.  Please feel free to reach out as I'm eager to learn and willing to buy a beer for those who are local and willing to share their knowledge!  Thanks again for your time and I look forward to becoming a member of this community.

Regards,

Evan