All Forum Posts by: Brandon Foken

@Glen Underwood - Kyle answered your question, but to add a bit more commentary, it will all depend on your seller and what your plans are. If you are wholesaling the property and have buyers you've worked with in the past, it can be as easy as having them put down an EMD for you. When negotiating with sellers, know that the standard CAR contract stipulates 3% as an EMD, but I've never put down that much. Usually the amount I put for an EMD ranges between $7,500 and $15,000 depending on the contracted amount. Hope that helps.

@Adam Clark - Escrow handled everything. The property was owned F&C so they took the sales price - back taxes = her proceeds. If memory serves me right, she walked with about half of the gross proceeds after paying everything off. Hope that helps.

I have not had a chance to walk it yet. Apparently the sellers considered doing the work themselves but got sticker shock with rehab budgets of $300k-$500k. One option seems to be to add a unit in the basement area - essentially a partial garage conversion. I didn't want to spend too much time spinning my wheels on this one as I knew it was out of my ballpark. Hoping that someone else here on BP will be able to make good use of the lead versus me just tossing it.

I got a lead on my website from a seller that is trying to offload their SFH in the Alamo Square area of San Francisco. I'm not at the point in my investing career where I can handle a $2.2M purchase, 9 month hold time and a ~$3.1M ARV. If you can, please contact me and I'd be happy to put you in touch with the seller.

I'm working with a seller who owns a house with a significant square footage difference between county records and the actual size of their house. County records show it's a 3/2.5 with 2,323 sqft. In reality, the house is a 3/3 with 3,006 sqft. The seller did an addition back in 1989 and has the full permit history associated with the construction. I gave the seller an offer based upon county records, but they now want me to give a revised offer based upon their actual size. I've spoken with them and they are fine with a contingency ensuring that I can get county records to accurately reflect the sqft of the house.

So, my question is, how do I go about getting this fixed? I've called the assessor's appraisal office a few times only to be met with their voicemail each time so I'm not getting any help from them. In general, what would the process be to get the square feet accurately reflected + rough timeframe and costs? 

I just recently formed an LLC in California. I submitted all the paperwork myself, but I used LegalZoom to draft up my Articles of Organization. It seems like this is a pretty solid option if you are just looking for a simple, straightforward LLC. Overall, LegalZoom gets great reviews from me, I was very happy with their service. Set me back a little over $200, but I thought it was well worth the expense and probably a lot cheaper than a lawyer. Might be worth looking into.

@Naveen Desai I hadn't thought of putting any rentals on there. Zoning seems to restrict any sort of higher density apartment complexes. Also, and this is as of today, houses are going for about $550-600k ($330 PSF) in the area. I think those two factors are pushing me to only thinking about this as a SFH development, but I'm certainly no expert at all when it comes to this (or any) arena.

Quick update for those following along. I finally got back in touch with the seller and was able to establish a bit of rapport over Lake Shasta of all places. He was extremely resistant to throw out a number, but after a few minutes of talking back and forth, he told me to give him a few days while he ran through some numbers and he'd get back to me with an initial asking price. Once I get that, I'll be able to see if his number is a possibility and it'll really help in my analysis. Hope to have more soon!

I spend a lot of time on Houzz going through some of their design books to find good looking color combos, styles, etc. Their search function is pretty decent so that if you type in "white cabinets with granite" you should get a large range of options. While not the easiest way to find an answer, I've found it helps me keep up on style trends.

@J. Martin I complete agree, re: Dani. The coaching pitch kills me as I still keep emails from him even after I've unsubscribed, added it to my spam list, etc.