New Member With Some Experience in Dallas Fort Worth

[Tuan Phan]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been lurking on the site for some time, but I wanted to introduce myself now that I’m making the jump into real estate investing full time.

I'm not completely new to real estate investing because my brother, friend, and I have bought a handful of rental properties (all but one are SFH) in DFW over the years, but we've kind of done it in a slapdash and part-time way. However, after being laid off in the Bay Area, my father wanted me to come back to DFW and start a real estate investing company with him.

With the help of @George Blower (whom I found on this site), we’re in the process of establishing a C corporation and funding it with our 401k’s via ROBS. It’s a very ninja process that I’d be happy to share my experiences on if anyone is curious.

We’re going to start off doing flips and then eventually transition to rentals for long term growth. We’re starting with flips because the IRS rules on ROBS say you have to be an active and not passive company, and so I can take advantage of all the fringe benefits a corporation can write off lol. We don’t need the income from this company to live, so I want to use the profits to provide health care benefits to my father (he has ongoing needs), and so we can travel around to find new deals for the company.

I'd love to connect and hear people's experience on flips or BRRRR in the DFW area, or even Texas in general. We're going to stay local for the first few houses because I'll do everything myself. I love working with my hands and I'm pretty good at it, and it'll be a great learning experience for me. Can y'all share numbers that you've seen? E.g., purchase price, rehab costs, and sale price. Or at least give me an idea on purchase price. This is very important so I know how much to initially fund the company, because to put it simply, the rules say that your first purchase has to be 50% of the initial funds.

I haven’t spoke to an agent yet (I’m looking for one), but I’m thinking our first flip will be in the $125,000-175,000 range unless I’m told that’s too low, so our initial funding to the company will be ~$250,000 to meet the 50% rule. Once we’re more experienced, we will be targeting larger purchases and can move >$1 MM into the company as needed. In the future, we're open to venturing into commercial real estate, but for now we want to start small and learn our way up. And fixing up houses will be a fun way for me to spend time with my father, so I'm happy with this for now. 

This website and its members have been an invaluable resource to me. I look forward to developing partnerships and hopefully even friendships with the members on here, and I hope I can become a useful contributor in the near future.

Cheers,

Tuan Phan

[Ryan Blake]

@Tuan Phan

Welcome back to DFW. It has been a market that is hot, and now possibly overly hot. In 2009 when I started we were buying properties at 60% to 65% of the ARV including the repair number. Now wholesalers are looking for 80% and you might be lucky if you jump on an MLS deal quick and get it for 70% to 75%. Best way to get deals now is to source them yourself but this can be costly and time consuming. It is all about the working relationship you have with your GC or subs and capital. If you can keep the costs down on these two items, you can purchase in the 75% to 80% range. If not, then you really should be purchasing sub 75%. I can't give you exact numbers because the are all going to be relative to each property. I think staying at the $150k to $250k ARV in the Tarrant County area or $200k to $300k ARV in the Dallas County Area is a good starting point. This is the range of properties that should fly off the market if done well and priced accordingly.