All Forum Posts by: Bart H.

 I believe if you buy it with the intent of flipping it, that regardless of how long it takes you to sell that the earnings would be subject to payroll taxes.

 4 smoke detectors installed?  is that with hard wired detectors?  Otherwise that should be about $50-80 for the basic smoke detector, throw in a littl elbow grease and maybe an hour or two TOPS to hang them if you havent ever done one before.  A good handyman should have them up in a couple of minutes a piece.

Unless you are in the boonies and dont have any other options, you got pricing that was above retail.  The popcorn ceilings, moving the washer and dryer. those items should literally be half or a third of what they are trying to charge you.

As others have said for $6K, you could darn near get brand new plumbing for the whole house for that price.

 I think its slowing to above average,  Its no longer super red hot.

We have had issues finding anything we like for a while now.  But then our business model isn't predicated on doing a deal in order to eat.  So we can be patient.

  There are some single family homes to the south of the Medical district, there are some investors trying to buy up anything in the area at about 300K.

#2, the Zang/Tyler is about 300-350K.  I am selling right now at $310.  (house is probably worth a little more but I have realtors kicking in to get the deal done.).  Bought it in 2014 for $235.  I'd buy anything that was any where close to reasonable for $150K in the Zang area..  Even down to south of Illinois you have trouble finding much south of $200K, $300K if its rehabbed.

I think it depends on the volume. I dont think a large investor who wants to buy 8-10 houses a month could find enough on the MLS.

For the most part what we see are either retail priced properties, or else we see a lot of overpriced "investor special deals".  

We end up looking for properties that are mispriced or mis marketed by the realtor. Maybe a realtor lists a duplex as a SFH, or has a SFH on a multi family lot. Or maybe the property has an ADU, or has terrible pictures. Maybe the square footage is wrong on the listing. .

The house we currently live fell out of contract to another buyer the week of Thanksgiving, so we were able to look at it over Thanksgiving and had it under contract on that Sunday, the sellers were out of state investors who didnt realize the house was in a conservation district. 

We find anymore that our best advantage is being able to identify houses visually that might not fit the normal filters people have when they are looking at the MLS.

A couple of things, have you looked at your portfolio and determined what if any properties aren't cash flowing, or have significant equity? 

 It might behoove you to prune a property or two out to improve your cash flow, or allow you to find properties that might have better cash flow.

The second piece on the BRRR, is it all depends on how good of a deal you get and how much debt you put back on the property.

the real strength of BRRR is that you can use the same down payment/cash to buy and rehab the property, then get that money back from the refinance so that you can do it again.

Ie you end up with couple hundred in free cash flow, a few hundred on the paydown of the loan, and you can get your money back to do it again.

Its the repeatability that makes it appealing imo.  

Also remember that those who are saying that they have large cash flows may have bought in 2010,  or 2013.  They may have had rents go up over time and might live in high cash flow markets.  You mention Texas, its not a super high cash flowing market.  It is a pretty solid price appreciation market.

I believe SW has between 30-40, I dont know how many of those fly back and forth into Austin. 

As someone who has house hacked a few times. By house hack, I mean we have done the buy a duplex live in one side thing. And we also have moved into a SFH, lived a year or two, thenbought a new house and rented the one behind us.

I generally say that "returns" are not as important in a house hack, and I believe it to be true for a few reasons.  

Usually a house hack is being done by someone trying to get into real estate investing for the first time.  Just getting into the game with a so/so property you dont mind living in for a couple of years does the most important thing, it breaks the ice and gets you into the game.  I would rather someone new get started with a so/so deal than not do any deal at and never get started.

There isnt anything wrong with taking a semi low cash flow for a little nicer property that you dont mind living in.  And if you live in the house for a couple of years, the costs are fixed, the rents hopefully are going up 2-3% a year, and the price of the property goes up 2-3% a year, and you have a couple of years of paydown of the mortgage.  Those couple of years take a mediocre deal and likely turns it into a decent deal in terms of financial returns.

And if the market goes negative, the worst case is you are in a house that you are willing to live in.

You are able to put less down, so there is an increase in leverage that you can employ which all other things being equal improves your return.

I believe if you are looking at a house that you will live in, you will end up as a more discriminating buyer and will be pushed to up and coming neighborhoods.

Overall, you dont want to buy a "bad deal" just because you are house hacking, but at the same time if you plan on living in the property with an affordable mortgage, you can buy a year or two until the property is actually making a decent return

 What neighborhood is it?  what is the high end of the comps? 

Depends on what you do, might cost you 80-100K in rehab. 20-25K in transaction/holding costs depending on the financing.

 Its usually a condition put on loan approval by the underwriter. 

The underwriter of the loan usually approves the loan with a handful of stipulations.  Might be they need a copy of our lease, or bank statement, or a letter stating why we are moving.   

The mortgage broker (or bank) will tell you if a letter is needed as a condition of the loan from the underwriter.  Its really not a big deal, we say the absolute minimum to answer the question.

Like I said, we really do move in (if we do am owner occupied loan), I am too old to wear orange with a serial number on it.

BTW, the more properties/loans you have the more questions you seem to get.