All Forum Posts by: Andrew Leese

I almost did one of those in Post Falls a little over a year ago. I regret not doing it. I was told it would take around 6 months to complete a simple subdivision at the time.

Go for it and let us know how it goes. 

Hi Brian,

Sounds like a great deal!  One option is hard mone financing. If you have attended the local meetups ou ma already know some lenders.

If not, @David Clinton III is a great resource and I can also recommend one who I have worked with via PM.

Hi Mike, I have had Kevin Kimpton (Post Falls) take care of my taxes for the past couple of years and he is quite savvy about real estate in my opinion. 

@Caylon Coomes , 

I agree with Patrick. You can come up with rough ARVs using Redfin or Zillow to look at recent comparable sales within a radius of your target properties, but it can be tricky to come up with a hard number if you don't know the submarkets very well. I like to hire an agent to do a CMA after I get a property under contract and again when I am ready to resell.

As for rents, I use rentometer.com. Zillow also has a rental Zestimate that you can cross-reference. 

Hi Clayton, 

There are a few rules of thumb you can use for quick evaluations like the 1% Rule and the 50% Rule. Both can be helpful but do not work for every single property. It's best to find out what your average expense-per-unit is in your market for the types of properties that you are looking at. This can be found by talking with property management companies and by doing your own research.

@Brandon Turner wrote a good article on estimating rental property expenses a while back: https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2014/12/02/rental-property-expenses/

As Patrick says, Bellingham is an expensive market. There is a lot of money flowing up from Seattle and probably some flowing down from Canada as well. Asset prices in this class are quite inflated, IMO. If you want cash flow you are almost certainly going to have to source deals off-market.

Best of luck,

Andrew

Here is the public records request form:

http://www.kcgov.us/services/prrform.pdf

If you look at the line just below the signature box, it reads:

"I certify that the information reviewed or received will not be used as a mailing or telephone list as prohibited under Idaho Code §74-120."

Hi Daniel, 

I ran into this same conundrum when I was living in the area and eventually gave up on the delinquent tax list. When you request a copy of the current tax roles from the county the treasurer's office will require you to sign a statement that reads that the records will NOT be used as a mailing list or phone list. Idaho's privacy laws stipulated a $1,000 fine per incident (I think that it was interpreted to me as meaning per call or piece of mail) if convicted. Although it seemed unlikely that anyone would report me I didn't feel good about signing a statement like that and then using records that way anyway, so I gave up. If you can think of a legal workaround I am all ears.

Ben Leybovich calls this Luxury House Hacking. It sounds like a wonderful way to go even if it’s not likely to be as lucrative as hacking a plex. Check out his article on this great strategy: https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/luxury-house-hacking/

Adam, great question. If and when it will dip in Bellingham is anybody's guess. Playing the appreciation game can be like gambling, and if your house is really cash flowing well after all of your expenses and your mortgage payment I'm not sure if it makes sense to sell. If you were going to take your $150K and invest in another market that cashflows better on average than Bellingham then it might be worthwhile to look into some possibilities. Otherwise, if you could refi and pull some of that equity out of your house without killing the cash flow, then you could put that cash into another investment. Tough call. Ultimately it depends on what your goals are.

Randall, that sounds like a great plan. I'm a little bit envious of your position.

Hi Paige, welcome to the neighborhood(s)! It's great to hear there's another investment-oriented realtor in the area!