1st investment property! Now on to the next!

[Garett Collins]

Investment Info:

Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $122,000
Cash invested: $17,000

The duplex sale price was $25,000 and needed almost $100,000 in rehabbing costs. It was a full gut rehab with everything new except exterior walls. It was a crazy first home purchase, project, and investment but now it is cash flowing about $800/mo and we love it!

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

At the time we needed a place to live and figured having someone else paying our mortgage would be a good idea. At the time we were unaware that we were house hacking and now that we have moved we found a property manager and it's cash flowing!

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

Found it on Zillow after looking for a long time and then connected with an agent.

How did you finance this deal?

Used cash and a family member gave us a hard money loan to finance the rehab until we refinanced.

How did you add value to the deal?

New everything haha!

What was the outcome?

CASH FLOWING RENTAL!

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Oh my goodness. We were only 20 & 21 (my wife and I) and we learned about needing permits, dealing with mold, dealing with grand fathered in code items vs bringing things to code, dealing with the city (It was black listed), learned how to demo, how to paint, how to install moulding and laminate/vinyl flooring planks, and I am sure I am forgetting more. This was a 6 month loooong process and we ran into a bunch of issues but in the end it was worth it.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

We worked with an agent that sells all of the bank owned homes in Southern Maine. I forget his name unfortunately.