First rental, a small 3/1 in Chesapeake, Virginia

[Valerie Cudnik]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Chesapeake.

Purchase price: $113,500
Cash invested: $30,000

Still cleaning this new, first purchase up to get it rented. A delayed closing messed up our goal of getting a renter in by December 1st, but we're still pushing to get someone in there before the end of the year. We're in a military dense area, and people with families tend to transfer into and out of the area in December & June. It's a small 3/1 with a big corner lot. Nothing major to do, just making it "mother-in-law clean" and fixing little bits and bobs.

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

Cash flow. The money for the down payment was sitting in a bank account earning 0.5%. I finally convinced hubby that even after expenses the ROI from the income makes sense.

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

MLS with a friend who just got her real estate license (she is also an investor). Negotiated for specific repairs through our agent, than got a little more off the price when it appraised just shy of our offer.

How did you finance this deal?

Commercial loan with 25% down.

How did you add value to the deal?

We're doing the bits of work that need being done ourselves, which is tough when we both work full time. Otherwise, really, we paid retail.

What was the outcome?

Still working on the cleaning (we closed 11/1). Everything should be ready to go in a week.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

The biggest challenge was my lender. Everything that could have gone wrong did: the appraisal took almost 2 weeks (appraiser said it wasn't ordered until the day before he did it), asking for additional documents after the underwriter had supposedly gone through things - and sending those requests at 3 a.m., losing information (even though it was uploaded and named properly). Mistakes on every single version of the closing disclosure. Oh, & they sent me someone else's loan docs & PW!