Investor & Contractor in Fredericksburg, VA

[Anna Shaw]

Good afternoon from a long-time lurker and first-time poster.

My husband and I are currently on our third real estate investment--and the first one that hasn't also served as our own home. The current investment is a fix and hold SFH in Fredericksburg, VA that we are remodeling from college student dump to an upscale small rental home.

My husband has a background as a high-end builder and has his contractor's license in Virginia. As this puts us in a bit of a different situation than many investors, we are currently trying to determine the strategy that will work best for us. He does not necessarily want to be a full-time contractor for hire at this point because we have a young son and he needs to have some flexibility in his schedule as my job requires a fair amount of international travel.

Our plan is to focus primarily on fix and flip properties for the near term to capitalize on his abilities. The project we're working on currently was purchased really just to get us off the sidelines and back into doing something. Fix and hold really isn't what we are looking to do at this point, but it made the most sense for this property.

At this stage, our biggest issue is trying to figure out financing that will allow us to queue up multiple projects at a time (and not miss out on good deals because our capital is tied up). We haveaccess to private capital to fund one property at a time, but in order to hire a couple of reliable laborers we need to have the next project ready to go as soon as the previous one is complete. I believe hard money is going to be the next step, but I'm still doing my due diligence in figuring out if that is the best option.

My goal in becoming more active on this site is to learn (of course!), to help refine our strategy, and to network with other investors and wholesalers in the area. I would also welcome any advice/suggestions with regard to our strategy/situation.