First Investment Property

[Phylis D.]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $70,000
Cash invested: $25,000

2 bedroom/1 bath, Single Family home, 967 sqft. on 3/4 of an acre, long-term rental

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

Did anyone else wake up in 2020 and ask yourselves, "What am I doing with my life?" Well, I did! In 2020 my husband and I were staying in an Air BnB and I said, "What are we doing? We can do this!" and so we purchased our first single family home. We wanted to start with something small to hopefully keep our costs down. We also wanted a long-term rental for the passive income.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

The property was a For Sale by Owner, needed a lot of work and was overpriced. Three things that all worked in our favor considering homes were selling in less that 24 hours in our market. We were able to talk the owners down from their asking price based upon the repairs that were needed and then was able to get even less once we shared the inspection report.

How did you finance this deal?

We did a construction loan since the home needed so many repairs.

How did you add value to the deal?

We did a lot of the work ourselves, which was a learning process for us. However, we wanted to push ourselves out of our comfort zones and do things we've never done before and take that experience to our next investment.

What was the outcome?

In the end, we were able to do a small cash-out refinance and now we have a nice, remodeled home great for retirees, singles, or a young couple with a lot big enough to expand the size of the current house or add a home to later.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

If I did it over again, I would add more to our contingency funds and be more prepared for delays. It took longer than we had expected thanks to shortages, etc. (thank you 2020 - ha!)

[Phylis D.]

Hi @Chris Webb! Thank you! I'm a fan of the BRRR method, but we wanted to jump in and didn't have the cash reserves to pay for the entire purchase and reno. It was really a method that just worked for us at the time. With the construction loan, we had to either refinance in two years or pay off the note, so we decided to try the cash out refinance to get any money back that we could. I am a newbie here, so I wouldn't call it advanced - lol - but I would think new or advanced investors could use this process. To me it's all about your situation and what process will get you to where you want to be.

@Chris Webb