All Forum Posts by: Alex Smith

@Suzanne Griffiths thank you for taking the time to respond to my post! Great advice!

 thanks so much! I really appreciate that!

Yay! Many offers and months of studying later our first buy & hold property is under contract! It is a duplex, each unit 1 bed/1 bath in South Jersey (Salem County). We are buying the property for $79,900 with a commercial mortgage (20% down). It is currently tenant occupied and being rented for a total of $1,475/ month. The property could use some minor repairs, but through our repairs request we negotiated and came to an agreement that the buyer is going to provide us with a $3,500 credit towards our repairs-which we were very excited about. The duplex will cashflow roughly $600/ month and we are excited to keep things rolling and find another. 

This leads me to my question......how do we finance the next? We have our eyes on a duplex in town that is vacant, not for sale and the owner is staying current with her tax payments. We are in the process of tracking her down and hopefully getting inside the property/making an offer, but at that point we are unsure of how we are going to finance this one. We wouldn't be able to afford the out of pocket expenses for another conventional mortgage right away and we have tried previously to get a HELOC on our primary residence, but my income alone does not qualify us for one and my fiance's paychecks are not on the books at this time. With recent changes in her job and possibly even mine, we are hoping that in the next 6-12 months we will be able to qualify for one, but are there any options that we are missing that we could utilize in the mean time?

Any input would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Hi!

I came across a property today on Zillow that has me extremely confused. I was hoping by posting the descriptions here somebody could help explain it to me and the process of acquiring a property like this.

So the listing says "For Sale by Owner $9,999"

In the description it reads, "Home has several liens including a Federal lien. Opportunity for investor/builder to foreclose and either acquire for $10,125 or immediately selling for higher at auction to the Federal government.

Unique situation for the expert buyer. Property has federal lien that can be extinguished or at least make money on the transaction and immediate federal lien acquisition. House will cost $8,350 or will be purchases for $11,000. 750 at closing." 

@David Dachtera He never asked for money up front, but he offered to lend us money without meeting us, talking to us or knowing anything about the property.

Has anyone heard about a Frank Howard? He reached out to us about lending us money for a fix and flip we want to do and it all seems a little too good to be true. I'm going with my gut on this one, but I'm just curious to see if other people have come across his name...

Thank you @Mark Nolan!

Thanks  @Jordan Decuir! I can definitely se myself getting caught up in the analysis part of things. I'm a numbers nerd. Appreciate the advice!

Hi everyone! 

My girlfriend and I (Dawn Curry) are super excited to have stumbled upon such an awesome resource! I can already tell that this community is amazing. 

So, Dawn has grown up in a family that has 30+ years in the construction industry and now is currently working FT with her dad's construction business. I grew up with parents that used to be realtors and have always had a passion for real estate, but never decided to dive in until now. We have been doing extensive research in the marketplace and have been wanting to flip a house. We bought the house we currently live in about two summers ago and did most of the work ourselves, loving every minute of it. We've found a house in our hometown that has a lot of potential. Obviously we've done some calculations to see if it would even be beneficial to us before moving forward. The other day we met with the bank to figure out the loan situation since we don't have the capital just yet and obviously the bank was pushing for a HELOC because it's less risky for them; however we don't have the equity for that and none of our family members are willing to do that for us.

We would be doing most of the work ourselves, with the guidance of Dawn's Dad & some of his construction team. The house is a foreclosure and we want to put in a bid for 20k (if the bank were to counter, we wouldn't go higher than 35k) and we have estimated the rehab costs to be about 38k based on two walk throughs with a contractor and a realtor. Based on current comps in the area, we think we could resell it for 115-120k. What are our options as far as getting started with this first flip with little or no money down?

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks everyone!