All Forum Posts by: William Allen

@John D. , here you go...

http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/41/topics/145970-homesearchcom-experience

exactly the same as my situation. In fact, I did submit a much higher offer prior to the auction and ended up getting the house on the third auction attempt for much less. Wrote a post about it and will link to it when I get back to a computer (it's in my profile as a previous post somewhere). Happy for you, make sure you read the contract closely. Mine went very well and they even let me use my closing attorney since they didn't have one in southern Maryland. 

I completely agree with @Joshua D. , great list.  #5 on his list has really been a great tip for me lately.  I have only recently gotten the word out that I am investing in real estate to my friends and family (not many of them actually but a few).  And, I have recently been contacted by 2 of those people asking if I was interested in buying their houses since they are moving.  One of this will make a fantastic rental property and we can cut out the RE commissions to get me a better deal on it.  

Don't discount the HUD websites and other auction websites but certainly make sure you do your homework on those properties, good title search and due diligence. Good luck.

@John D. , those sound like good numbers to me!   Good luck and let me know what you hear back from homesearch as I am interested in case I come across another good deal on their site.

That may very well be what it means.  I got a phone call asking for my max bid then next the next thing I know I had a contract in my email inbox.  Hopefully that is what happened for you via their website and you get the house.  Good luck!

@Travis Hamilton , welcome to BP.  I am just finishing up my tour in southern maryland and will be heading back to Pensacola in a few months time.  I have some contacts there but will be building a lot of my team just like you.  Hopefully we can help each other out.  I have rentals in NE Pensacola but we will likely be living in Pace this time around.  Let me know if I can help in the meantime.

-Bill

@James Wise thanks!  I can say that a lot of my success was attributed to this site.

@Trevor Ewen , the house would have made a fantastic rental had it not sold very quickly.  That made it hard to sell but in the end, we are moving to a new city and it made more fiscal sense to take the profit and invest there in a few months time.  I hope to continue to have these problematic decision in the future, sell for a big profit or add it to the rental portfolio...

I am primarily a buy and hold investor but I had a great opportunity come my way that I couldn't pass up.  Initially this property was going to be a rehab and rent but when I looked at the margins it made more sense to try to flip it with a rental as a backup exit strategy.  

I wrote a post about my home search.com experience.  If any of you want the details, have a look at my profile and read that post.  It was quite the learning process and I'm glad I did my research ahead of time.  The short story was that we bought the property on the auction website for $120k with a $6k buyer premium fee and closing costs of about $2k for a total of $128k.  

Initially I had a $40k budget for the property but I changed the scope in an attempt to increase the ARV after I walked through the other resales in the neighborhood (the neighborhood could support a higher price than I originally planned on).

We ended up doing a $62k renovation on the property to include a new roof, all new mechanical systems (including A/C compressor, hot water heater, furnace, sump pump), full kitchen and bathroom renos, all new flooring, paint, landscaping and deck.  Plenty more little things but too many to list.

Holding costs were close to $3k and selling costs were $28k (RE commission, my closing costs and help for buyers closing costs).  

Selling price of $264k giving us a pre tax profit of $43k!  

I am very happy with this experience and will likely continue to look for a few flip deals a year to supplement my rental income.  I had a good time and learned a lot.

One of the things I learned during this project was no matter what you plan for and how many times you walk through the property you will miss something.  One example of this was when I went to have the gas company come out to turn on the gas to the house, the guy wouldn't turn it on because the meter was under the deck.  The previous homeowner built the deck (which was obvious due to the poor construction) on top of the gas meter and I hadn't noticed it.  I was already changing the railings and stairs on the deck so we ended up cutting 1/3 of the deck off to expose the gas meter.  Fortunately the deck was large enough that this still made for a very nice entertaining area outside.  

I look forward to the comments and questions.

-Bill

@Terry Janney , no problem