BRRRR ("fix and rent") in Columbia area

[Eric P.]

I'm curious if BRRRR ("fix & rent") works in the Columbia metro area. Essentially, the ability to have your purchase price + rehab costs less than 70% of the ARV, so after you rehab you can find tenants & then refinance to get all of your cash back. I'm sure there must be some areas / neighborhoods where this works? Of course, the other requirement is that the rental income is enough to cover your mortgage + expenses on the back-end. So this tends to work best in middle class neighborhoods.

Are there any licensed real estate brokers / agents who can help me find such properties? Not interested in Turnkey btw - I'd rather buy pre-renovation (not post-renovation) to capture the equity myself.

[Christopher Bunge]

Eric,

If you are talking about Columbia SC the answer is "absolutely".  There are plenty of neighborhoods where this can be done consistently.

Looked at a house yesterday in an area of town that is improving rapidly and the city is throwing money at large public/private projects aimed at beautification and improving the types and amount of commerce there.   Comps on this house now are in the 80s, rehab around 5k and it is for sale for 45k. Rent on the house would be in the 775 to 875 range.  I sold one a couple weeks ago up the street for 38k and the appraisal came in in the 80s. Rehab is going on now and he will spend about 10k.  House will rent for 895.

There are parts of town where you don't have to rely on gentrification to get the ARV up. There are many, many opportunities to buy and the rent will more than cover PITI and leave you a repair budget as well.

There are many, many properties around here that can be bought with flip profits left in them where the rent will produce positive cash flow by anyone's math. Rents in the Columbia SC market are high and projected to go up 11% in the next two years.  The other nice thing about our market is that you can buy houses for relatively small money.  Generally 35k and up.  As everyone on BP knows, your money is made when the property is bought and not when it is sold.