All Forum Posts by: Ben Lauer

Thanks Mark, I've been listening to the podcasts and in general the site has been incredibly helpful.  I have been reading a lot of blogs, there's a great community out here!

Thanks David!  I love the bowtie, not everyone can pull that off like you do!

I'm Ben and I've been in real estate in the Dallas area for 10 years and I'm finally to the point to begin investing.  I'm looking forward to being a part of the community, helping where I can and absorbing as much info as possible.

I know the Dallas area very well, specifically Uptown, East Dallas and the cities around NE Dallas (Richardson, Garland, Mesquite, Rowlett, Plano, etc).

I'm always happy to help so if you have any questions about my area, drop me a line anytime otherwise I'm excited to learn everything I can from the community here on BP! 

My basic strategy is to find rehab properties to fix up, rent them and then refinance them into a note to get our money back out and hold onto them while using the same cash to buy more properties.  

I have about 150k to use, the plan was to buy the properties cash, rehab and appraise into a Fannie Mae loan, the big problem there is that we'll need to hold them for 6 months before they'll allow us to reappraise at a higher value.  

Is there any way to cut down this wait time without paying lots of closing and origination costs?  

Ideally I'd like to try to do 4-5 next year, if I'm waiting the 6 months I'll be able to do maybe 2.  

Thoughts?  Ideas?  Anything you can give me to work on is greatly appreciated!

I'd be very upfront with him about your concerns and generally if he's putting his own leases together, that's not the last problem you'll find.  His poor housekeeping shouldn't keep you from the property if it's that good but do extra due diligence and make sure you talk with the tenants first and that he hasn't just slapped someone in there to dump it, inherited tenants can be a nightmare if he didn't vet them as well as you might.

Since you inherit the leases, maybe have a lawyer look over the leases to see if there are glaring holes, that may be an issue for you and once you buy the property, it's your issue.

A lot of these questions are going to depend on the relative condition of the neighborhood.  Make sure you aren't over upgrading and if you're planning on reworking the floorplan a little, it might give you more rent but obviously cosmetic refinements take a beating with most tenants.  

I also like tile in kitchens over vinyl, it's a bit of an upgrade and it's tough for the tenant to screw up the tile.  

Unless you're getting a little more cost effective deal and more rent doing more upgrades now, I would say hold off.  Tenants are generally going to give you enough reason to remodel after a few good years of rental anyways.