New Rehabber in New England

[Tyler L.]

Hi Everyone,

I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself. My partner and I are Northeastern University students located in Boston and are looking to rehab properties in New England. We’ve been focusing our research on Nashua and Manchester, and to a lesser extent Providence, but are open to deals all over. 

We're in contact with two money lenders who would be open to lending up to $500k for the right deal. That said, we're currently looking for deals with an ARV of between $200-$250k without stroke-inducing renovations (no structural damage/foundation issues/former meth houses). We're open to these kinds of deals in the future (maybe not meth houses) but we both want to walk before we run.

We've both taken the semester off to work day jobs full time, him at a mutual fund and me at a software startup. We'll return to school in January, take the fall semester of next year off to work again (hopefully doing REI) and graduate in spring of 2020. I grew up surrounded by RE investors, agents, and flippers, accompanied them to work in high school, and now have spent about a year and a half lurking on this forum and listening to the BP podcast on a never ending loop, as well as reading about one REI book a week. I'd say it's about time to get started!

[Tyler L.]

@Blake Denman there were a few reasons.

We’re based out of Boston, so New England as a whole made sense to us. We wanted to stay within 90 minutes of our location to keep a vigilant eye on the properties. We decided against Boston itself for a few reasons, including: prohibitively expensive, very competitive market, and difficult permitting process. All told, it’s too many moving parts for first time flippers.

The three cities we chose fit a set of criteria we listed: reasonably affordable median home price, medium-sized market, large percentage of suburban houses, and attractive area for families. 

I’ve seen more opportunities in New Hampshire so far, so I dedicated most of my research there, but Providence or any other market I get in to I will know by heart before an investment is made.

Of course, as a rehabber the job is to find the worst house on the best block. As we’ve explored these areas, we’ve found they have quite a good supply of exactly what we’re looking for.