All Forum Posts by: Molly Arnott

Not sure if you ended up finding anyone. Giana Wheless with River City Properties lives in East Sacramento and would be a great person to contact for managing your property! I've known her for 28 years, she is reliable and trustworthy. I've heard horror stories about some of the larger property management companies, they dont answer their phones and aren't there when you really need them. Beware of the sales pitches to hook you, but then they dont deliver when it counts.

Giana has an accounting background, so she will manage the funds appropriately and is an extremely organized person. River City Properties is a small shop, so they will really take care of you! Give her a call, I've attached her business card.

Investment Info:

Single-family residence other investment.

Purchase price: $186,000
Cash invested: $100,000
Sale price: $515,000

This house was in BAD shape, bank owned, and no bank would loan on it because the well and septic were shot. We were young and stupid and just got lucky with so many things about this house. We lived in it while fixing it up and planned to remain in it as our family home but circumstances changed and we ended up selling it for a great price and buying into our next property.

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

We were getting married and starting to think about kids, I knew we'd need a family home and this was the only way we could afford to do so.

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

Found it on the MLS and contacted an agent.

How did you finance this deal?

Originally we borrowed $240k from my Grandma and then repaid her (with some interest payments) 9 months later by doing a refi.

How did you add value to the deal?

What did we not do?! This place was almost a total gut. We ripped off the "indoor jacuzzi room" and breakfast nook because they were horribly done additions that were already falling off the house. Everything was new.

What was the outcome?

Great 4 bedroom 2 bath family home that we sold for a great profit.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

I would definitely buy REO again, I enjoyed taking the house no one wanted to touch and making something beautiful out of it. Financing was a challenge but we got lucky with the right family member in the right position at the time.

Investment Info:

Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment in Santa Rosa.

Purchase price: $770,000
Cash invested: $154,000

12 acres in Santa Rosa, we fixed up the main house and 2 bedroom rental. Live in the main house and rent out the apartment above the garage.

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

Having built equity in our previous live in flip and wanting a bigger property and home but not wanting the big mortgage so we stumbled into the idea of buying a place with a rental.

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

MLS and an agent, nothing exciting

How did you finance this deal?

We didn't qualify for the jumbo loan so the previous owner carried back 95k of the loan which we eventually moved over to a HELOC in order to cut ties with the previous owner.

How did you add value to the deal?

We've done flooring, paint, bathroom and kitchen updates to both the main house and rental.

What was the outcome?

We get $2300/mo for the 2 bedroom rental bringing our total cost to list there to under $2000.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Our well doesn't produce well and it's a constant concern. In the future I wouldn't purchase a rural property that doesn't have a well producing more than 2 gpm.

Hi ya'll! My name is Molly Arnott and I am really amped about getting into more investing and finding financial freedom through real estate. My husband and I have done a few accidental live in flips over the last 10 years, then couldn't sell one and became accidental landlords. Sold the first two eventually and bought our current property which has a rental on it and fixed them both up. I've loved real estate since we first started looking at buying our first place but for the past year or so I've been wanting to take a more serious and professional approach to it. I started studying last summer and got my real estate license last week (woo hoo!!). I've listened to the majority of the BP podcasts, read tons of articles, analyzed probably 20 deals just from MLS using the calculators and this week I threw out my first low ball offer. No response, but that's ok. My goal is to anazlyze 5 properties a week and throw out 2 offers a week (as long as the numbers work of course!). I've added myself to some buyers lists with wholesalers in the areas we're currently interested in. I'm most excited about multi-family properties using the BRRRR approach, especially liking the idea of then renting them using Airbnb since the cash flow is so much higher in some areas. Trying to focus in on the BRRRR and air bnb approach for now so I'm not all over the place. Thanks to BP for the incredible amount of content available, I've learned so much since I stumbled onto this website a few months back and know it'll be an invaluable resource going forward!