My first Baltimore buy & hold investment.

[Stephen Predmore]

Investment Info:

Single family rowhouse fix & hold investment in Baltimore, MD.

Purchase price: $65,900
Cash invested: $35,000
Rent: $1,400

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

Baltimore is a great cashflow market.  Lots of colleges, hospitals, industry.

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

MLS. Offered 3k under list price and they accepted.

How did you finance this deal?

Commercial loan (thru my LLC) 75% LTC and 100% rehab. Used 401k loan for down payment and closing costs.

Rehab completed?
New kitchen, flooring throughout, semi-major plaster wall & ceiling repair, replaced part of flat roof/gutters, paint, new appliances.  Minor electric and plumbing.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Purchased right at the start of the Covid-19 crisis.  Friends thought I was crazy.  Rehab was completed in about 6 weeks (10 weeks planned) due to my contractor having 2 crews able to work on the job (they had other Covid cancellations).   Hired property mgmt company for photos, listing and tenant placement (cost = 1st months rent).  Well worth the cost for me as a rookie.  Currently doing the PM myself.  Using Apartments.com for rent collection.

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

I worked with my agent, @Joe Norman.  He's a great realtor and investor himself.  Would absolutely recommend him to anyone. I used Scott Freitag with Eastern Savings Bank for my commercial loan.  Awesome as well.

[Stephen Predmore]

@George Lang Thank you. I was not able to BRRRR this deal because there really wasn't enough meat on the bone. Cost + rehab (65+35=100k), ARV 115k. If I refi'd at 75% ARV, I'd only have gotten back 86k (plus another set of closing costs). I knew this going in. The commercial loan I got also has pre-payment penalties for exiting it under 5 years.

If I am to find my next deal and try to BRRRR:

1) Needs to be a great deal

2) Need to be all in (acquisition + rehab) for 75% ARV (preferably using cash or HML)

3) Force value thru rehab (2/1 -> 3/1 ?)

4) Find a great tenant.  I'm leaning toward Section 8 which tends to have higher rents.

5) Need to refi into a conventional loan with low interest rate (probably won't use my LLC)

BRRRR deals are really hard to get 100% of your money back. How much money you are willing to leave in the deal to make it worth it? I've also been studying the 'delayed financing' strategy used by @Alexander Felice (BP podcast #301) where you include all rehab and insurance costs on the HUD-1 closing sheet. Then you're able to get back a bigger chunk of your initial $$ on the refi. Sounds awesome. The caveat is that you need to pay all (full acquisition + full rehab) costs upfront at closing.