I guess this is both a new member introduction and a success story. I started my RE investing journey back in August 2017 with the purchase of my first buy and hold property. Prior to that i spend a couple of months reading and listening to everything i could get m y hands on. After a lot of research, my wife and I knew we wanted to be buy and hold investors, but we also knew that meant we would need capitol. So our plan was to wholesale to build capital and use that capitol to buy rentals.

With that in mind we formed our LLC and we just happend across our first deal.

The Rental:

A good friend and co-worker of mine heard that i was looking for properties to buy and he just so happened to have a house he wanted to unload quickly. Its a classic 3/2 about 1300 sqft in a pretty desirable neighborhood. The home is valued at $140k and he was willing to sell it to me for $115k. It already had a tenant in it but they were not paying market rents. I was able to utilize 401K funds for the down payment. We closed on the property and raised the rents in order to make the deal worth wile.

5 Wholesales:

As we were working on the Rental deal, I continued to set up my business by creating a lead generating website, and joining BiggerPockets. I also worked with a local print company to have some post cards made, and i sourced a mailing list from one of the credit bureaus (about 1000 names/addresses). With those 2 things in place i started my first marketing campaign. I sent 1000 post cards out expecting a 1% return or (10 phone calls). I actually received around 50 phone calls, looked about about 10 houses, and put 2 under contract.

The first was a 3/2.5 in Springdale Arkansas. The owner had a sick relative out of state and needed to move ASAP. the house was valued at around $140k and i put it under contract for $60k, which sounds like a good deal. I marketed it for $65k and it got a lot of looks from investors. But as it turns out, the deal looked good on paper, but it was competing with a lot of new builds around it in the same price range. I was able to find a buyer for this property on Craigslist who wanted to live there and rehab it on their own. They saw it, loved it, and put a deposit down within a matter of days.

The next was not one of the leads from my marketing campaign. My wife happened across this lead on facebook. An older couple had a house in pretty bad shape. They posted on facebook asking if anyone would be interested in buying their property for what they owe. It was a 3/2 1400 sqft house on 3 acres in town. I went to look at it the next day and put it under contract on the spot. They owed around 90K, i put it under contract for 94K. I assigned it to a friend for $99K withing a couple days.

The second deal from my first marking campaign was a 4/2 house in Fayetteville. It had some foundation issues and had not been updated since it was built. The owners wanted to upgrade to a new house, but did not want to bother fixing their current place up. This time i took my potential buyer with me to look at the home, as i knew it was in an area that he is interested in. The numbers on this property are a little higher due to the desirability of the neighborhood. The home is worth around $190K after repairs. I put it under contract for $126K and assigned it for $131K.

The next 2 wholesale deals are assigned but have not yet closed. One is set to close the week after Thanksgiving and the other in Feb 2018.

The first was a lead from my postcard campaign which actually came in while i was traveling. The owner had a house which was in disrepair, so much so that they were hesitant to even have me come see it. Once i was able to talk the owner into letting me view the property, I called a friend of mine to actually go and see the home for me. Its a 3/2 in a desirable neighborhood of Fayetteville. The owners know it needs work, but they would rather sell it, then make the repairs. I had my partner make an offer for me, and put it under contract. This deal worked out really well because my buddy also decided he wanted to buy the house. So i was able to put it under contract and assign it that same day. I stand to make a good profit, and I have never even seen the house.

The last was actually a website lead. This property is a 3/2 in Rogers, Arkansas. The owners are in a tough financial spot and need to sell their home before it gets foreclosed on. This was my first true "motivated seller" lead, which actually made the negotiation fairly easy because the owners were open to disclosing exactly what the bank needed to get in order to stop foreclosure. I put the house under contract for a few thousand over what they owe, to help the owners cover any legal fees for the foreclosure. From there i reached out to my local REIA to find a buyer. Within a couple of days i was able to assign that contract to a cash buyer who plans on closing within a week and flipping it.

The Flip:

This lead came from a local realtor/investor. His client was looking to unload her home quickly and didn't want people in and out of her home. It had not been well maintained as she was elderly and could not keep up with the maintenance on this fairly large house. This property is a 4 bed 3 bath, with a separate office, and dining room, all totaling 2536 sqft. I was able to get the house under contract for $190k with a rehab budget of $30k and an after repair value of $300k. I went with a small local bank for the financing, and there were able to finance 100% of the project, so i did not have to bring a down payment. I am 2 weeks away from finishing the rehab and plan to list at $299k when its complete.

The House Hack

Once i started getting hits on my marketing campaign, it became clear to me that I needed to sell my current home which i paid retail for, and utilize my marketing to find a deal which i could fix up and build equity into, rather then keep paying on a property which i did not have equity in. So i did just that. I sold my home which was only 2 years old, made a very small profit, and started looking for a house hacking situation. My initial plan was to go the traditional route and buy a duplex and live in half. What i actually ended up doing was buying a 3 bed 2 bath single family home which has a separate mother-in-law house on the same property. The whole property is on 1 acre so the houses are not right on top of each other. The smaller mother-in-law house is a 1 bed 1 bath 750 sqft with its own fenced in back yard. I bought both properties for $190k and i am renting the small house out for $700 per month. I was able to utilize traditional financing for this deal, since i am living in it. This situation is working out well, because i now live in a larger house with more yard and pay half of what i was paying to live in my previous home. The real kicker is, i actually found out about this property because i over heard a coworker speaking to another coworker about a property he was having trouble selling. That is music to my ears as an investor, so i introduced myself and asked for more details. He initially wanted too much for the home, but i was able to utilize the BiggerPockets calculators to run some rental scenarios and walk through the print outs with him. This helped me paint a picture of a more realistic price for the property.

These are the cliffs notes versions of each story, if you want more detail on any of the deals above, feel free to reach out.

Henry Washington

Podcast Guest on Show #366

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