First Investment Property-Duplex

[Troy Kelly]

Greetings All,

First I must say how excited I am at finally being able to make my first diary post after so much planning, prepping, research, lamenting... You get the idea. Just to give some background, I've been lurking around on BP and other sites for nearly 7 years. I had the opportunity to jump in a few years back but allowed other things to distract me. None the less, this past July I purchased my first investment property and work begins this weekend.

Deal: Property was actually found on CraigsList believe it or not, it was actually one of the best resources that I personally found. It was more up to date than almost anything else, and I founds sellers on there to be pretty motivated. Anyway, I paid 11.7k (cash) for the property with the intention of spending about 25k on rehab. The rehab cost are coming from a HML i found on BP! Im a buy and hold investor, so these units will be rented once rehab is complete.

Property: The property is located in Baltimore city, unit A: 1/1, unit B: 3/1. I've opted to knock down a wall that divides one of the bdrms from the kitchen (in Unit B) to give it some living space (odd not having any living area).  Pretty quite block with a church located directly across the street from my property. One of the first things I noticed when I first looked at the property was ALL the neighbors kept their grass cut. Upon meeting the neighbor two doors over, I learned she was also keeping the lawn cut on my property (another great sign). 

Rehab: This property isnt a "major" renovation. The roof will be replaced, the walls in both units currently have plaster, they will be drywalled and the ceilings need to be resurfaced. The floors currently have hardwood (that cant be saved) so I will personally be installing laminate floors. Kitchens need floors, appliances and unit 1 needs full kitchen cabinets/sink setup. I'll also be upgrading both bathroms with new floors, new sing/vainty & showers. Full paint throughout the house (also doing this myself). Front soffits along with gutters will be replaced. 

ARV should be around 55k (conservative) once its done.

Work begins this weekend so fingers crossed that nothing major is found. I've already had a home inspection completed on the house, which came out pretty clean. A few leaks from pipes in the basement, roof of course and a few other small things. *Inspection was done after the purchase because the seller wouldnt allow any clauses in the all-cash deal*. My GC has gone over it pretty good so Im not too worried. It certainly hasn't been easy but I've done a lot of due diligence to know my business, the numbers and what Im getting myself into. I guess my biggest hurdle was accepting I couldnt eliminate all risk or variables; there was a certain amount of "to hell with it" i had to go into this first deal with, otherwise I would have never jumped in. I become ok with the 'worst case scenario' and then just jumped in! 

I will keep this post updated at least

weekly, thanks for reading!