12 Houses in 12 Months for 2015; A Monthly Journey - January

In December 2014, I formed a partnership with another real estate investor in my market. Although I live in Los Angeles full time our company buys houses in the Springfield, Massachusetts metro area. I grew up there and my parents still live there. We buy houses for cash, fix them up and sell them. We set a goal to acquire twelve houses in our first twelve months. This blog chronicles the journey.

My business partner Justin lives in the Springfield area too. He has his construction supervisors license (CSL) and now manages the rehabs and determines the construction costs so we can make a fair and fast cash offer. I handle the marketing for acquisitions and disposition of our properties. For acquisitions I bring leads to the table and get the offers out. We do a mix of online, direct marketing, networking and multiple listing service (MLS) lead generation. For disposition we also use MLS or our network to get the properties sold.

This January has been incredibly cold in New England and pounded with snow, so no surprise that things are a bit slow on listings or motivated sellers. We keep at it though scouring the MLS and push out direct mail. We put out twenty-eight offers and scored zero properties. Tough start, but we are not deterred.

We have full confidence that we will succeed and as we look ahead we know we need to determine financing. We start our conversations with local banks that are portfolio lenders. A portfolio lender is a bank that lends from its own vault and thusly not subjected to the strict government guidelines. The conversations start strong, but the process is slow. We have the money to fund and rehab a few deals, but want to ensure we can keep up with the anticipated momentum.

Net Results

Offers = 28

Acquisitions = 0

Sales = 0