All Forum Posts by: Benjamin Aaker

Hey Nate, have you considered becoming an agent?  I'm looking into online courses.  I agree with the posts stating that the agent input is valuable but it seems like you could recoup some of the costs at least on the buyer's side.  Every home I've ever bought I've found myself.  While I used an agent who surely did a lot of work with the offers/counter offers, I wonder how much could be saved by learning those things and DIYing it. I'd love to hear from the agents and investors out there in this area although BP has more posts than one could read about this topic.

@Hugh Ayles Thanks for the comment. I'm talking about personal purposes rather than tax purposes.  I want to get an idea of the costs for the next flip.  As @Alexander Felice stated, the contractor is a lot more efficient than me (even if I'd like to believe otherwise), and I don't want to do this much work on flips in the future.  I get a lot of satisfaction knowing the job was done well, by me, but it will not be economically feasible beyond 2-3 flips per year.  I really appreciate all of your expert advice.  I'll ask my wife to read these excellent posts and will give you an update with her comments.  This should be fun...

Thanks for all the great advice.  @Account Closed I'm not sure what labor vs materials goes for in this area.  That is a very good question.  My books have information about the bills but not the materials cost.  What is the ratio in your part of the country, or is there a standard amount that BP recommends?

My wife and I are finished fixing up our first flip.  We calculated our repair cost and there was about $19,000 worth of work done by contractors. We spent another $8,000 on materials for DIY such as flooring, paint, and landscaping.  I think that we would have paid a contractor another $8,000 for labor if we had them do the work.  I'm estimating that our repair cost is $35,000 and we need to use that to calculate our profit.  My wife thinks that we should not add our labor into it.  Her argument is that we would have been sitting on the couch watching Netflix if we didn't have this house to work on and we should estimate our repair cost at $27,000, thus feeling like we made more profit.

Who wins this argument?

Hi Graham,

I'm new here as well. I'm in Brandon. Another guy on BP, Pete Krentz, is from Sioux Falls and looking to start a REIA. You might want to connect with him. Hopefully we'll find a time to meet.

Benjamin 

Thanks for the comments and warm welcome.  I'll add building/selling into my consideration.  

That's in South Dakota in case you didn't know.  If you did, may be you are from around here and would like to give some advice.  Sioux Falls is currently in a real estate boom http://www.argusleader.com/story/news/business-jou...

Some people are complaining that it is cheaper to build than to buy.  This would seem to pose a problem for a real estate investor.  Can Bigger Pockets help me find an angle to invest in this type of market?