All Forum Posts by: BJ Dante

@James Canoy

Honestly don’t know! I was listening to the joe Rohan podcast where he interviewed psychologist Jordan Peterson. Joe said it and it stuck with me 🤷🏼‍♂️

@Uday Raju

First thing that stands out to me is the bathrooms and the water damage and stuff. Then looking at photos of holes in ceiling and walls. You’ve got a ton of drywall work and paint. Bathrooms redone. Kitchen redone. I’d seriously check the integrity of the wiring. If there were druggies there like up here in Portland, they’ll strip wiring out of walls. Not sure what costs are there but here I’d say between 100k and 125k JUST by looking at pictures.

@Nathan Killebrew

“Id rather be a warrior in a garden than a Gardner in a war”. Lots of sayings out there but this one struck me as powerful and challenging tbh.

@Tomiko Graves

I would just suggest getting a few quotes. Sounds like you’re not wanting to DIY, and like I believe Gary said $13k seems off the chart, especially for a tiny little bathroom. My wife and I put a heat pump in our house years ago and I pulled the electrical permit myself and wired the disconnect which saved me $1k there. Then I got quotes! $3k on low end and somewhere around $6,500 on the high end. That’s just to say, you may get the same work done for half the quote you received. Good luck!!!!

BJ

@Darek J. Hey man! Just my two cents as contractor who specializes in cabinetry which inevitably causes me to deal with plumbing, electrical, and hard surfaces. I think a lot of this depends on how much time you have. Since you’re handy you could do tear out yourself and I bet with 4-6 hours a day you could have everything pulled pulled out. If you’re keeping the layout of the unit the same you could just show pictures of old cabinets and bring in measurements and get pricing. At least up here, a custom cabinet shop (in my professional experience) can beat the price of a cabinet broker). Then get pricing for counters and stuff. The more you can do the less you have to pay. Just a thought.

Hey all. So I basically took a year off to focus on my wife's and my personal finances before we got serious about REI. Last year was a good year for my business and between student loans, medical, and a small amount of consumer debt, we paid off a whopping $34k in debt in about 13months and stashed about $10k in savings.

So now what?

I’ve had a few plans set up on getting financing from private lenders who I either know personally or am connected to through someone I know. But it seems like it falls through or people aren’t necessarily as serious about it as I am 🤔. But I am dead set on finding a fixer that has cash terms that someone can finance and I would try and cash flow repairs by myself. How do I do that? Do I ask on BP? It just seems weird that someone would line up a deal with someone they don’t PERSONALLY know. Does that make sense? I’m self employed and do cabinetry for a living and am savvy with a lot of other construction areas. I know I could cut repair costs down drastically by doing a lot of stuff myself and if I don’t know how I know people in the trades.

So if someone can point me in the direction or where to go or even direct me to someone who could use my services please let me know. I’m 32 and work in people’s homes who are in the financial position I want to be in. I don’t look at it as wanting to be wealthy but want to be at peace rather. Hope that all makes sense. I got a lot of thoughts in my head and probably jumbled them all up 🤓. Thanks!

Hey Steve. I for one honestly don’t care about solar one way or another. To be honest I think the technology is cool. I have a little Honda Insight that uses Honda’s IMA technology and because I hypermile (taught you a new term 😉) I was averaging 50mpg summer and 44mpg winter driving. I know the cost of replacing one of those batteries is a lot but the gas savings I was getting over a car that gets 30mpg over the life of one of those batteries more than covers for itself. However, again, this comes down to the original question. Why is government mandating this in CA or anywhere at all (I don’t know if this is the first case of this or not honestly)? You stated numbers about how the market has increased and more people are relying on solar because the the numbers work for them. Here’s my thing. It’s subsidized and I don’t for a second believe the $9,500 number they came up with even after subsidies. I’m not arguing the technologies cost beneifts,I’m arguing the fact that the government mandates its implementation, uses taxpayer dollars to subsidize it, then effectively lies about how much it will cost to justify their decision.

Hey everyone! This is the community for learning all things realty so I figure part of that needs to be humble and ask questions. I have ZERO real estate experience so if my questions now and I’m the future seems lame or naive. . . Well, you know why 🤓 So . . . . Looking at some of those foreclosed property sites like hubzu. Seeing that they have auctions for properties and the estimated starting bid. I know from reading some posts that some people like hubzu and some hate it. This isn’t about that site. This is specifically about an auction itself. All of them are going to be cash only buys correct? If that’s the case then do you personally have to have the cash/money available at your disposal or can you have approvals from a private or hard money lender? Are auctions a good place to find fix and flip properties? Lastly, is there any contingency if you win the bid that allows you to do an inspection or at a minimum walk the property prior to getting legally bound to a sale? Thanks in advance. BJ

Russell, you have just again debunked the theory of forcing a product on people. Wealthy people are wealthy because they are smart about money. If the payoff of solar was that good then the wealthy people would be paying for them. It’s what I call not pencilling out. And we wouldn’t even be discussing whether or not this was a good idea if government didn’t get involved in the first place . . . just saying 🤷🏼‍♂️

Michael Strobel Thanks for this write up man. I’m getting very serious about getting into real estate investing and this gave me some hope and honestly I didn’t realize you could send out mailers and entice people to sell who weren’t thinking of selling. That sort of answer my question as to how some folks on here have found such awesome deals I keep hearing about. Great write up and really appreciate it! BJ