All Forum Posts by: Brent Causey

Where has he been? He’s been mia for a year 

I was under contract for a 3/2 that was going to be a fix and flip. 

Contract signed on 10/1 and seller wrote a close date of 10/15. We did not close on 10/15 but I continued working with bank and seller still expected me to purchase home. We intended to close first week of November but day before closing bank informs me house is in an "A" flood zone. I backed out of house due to an undisclosed detail (flood zone) and an expired contract. The seller is threatning me via text and told me I was buying "as is/where is" so it should not matter if it's in a flood zone. My argument is that he never disclosed the flood zone and that the contract is way past expired. What are your thoughts on this? 

Advice: ALWAYS double check flood zone, even if seller says it's not. 

I think she's talking about her phone @Brian Woods

My W2 job is in IT so I'm used to dealing with finding software to solve a problem. I feel unorganized with everything scattered in texts, email, phone calls, excel,etc. If I had a way to send a mass text to all my roofers individually asking for quotes, reminding them, etc. I feel like I spend my entire day on text messaging contractors trying to get a response. I feel like there's a niche for this software if there's not any software already. I'm in rural north LA so we don't have a ton of options to begin with. 

I have done a little research and most of the forum posts I could find on software specific to flipping/rehabbing were out of date. I know there's tons of software for rentals and managing tenants, etc. 

Does anyone have a good piece of software for managing flips/rehabs? From beginning to end and a way to track historical data. I have some excel sheets I use, but I was wondering if there was some cloud software or regular software that does this better. 

For example, 10 years down the road I want to look at average roof prices based on square footage - That's hard to do with 100 excel sheets. 

Just curious if anyone has found anything they really like .

Thanks in advance - Brent 

 Windows are definitely expensive but I feel like new windows just bring the whole house full circle. I spent 5k on windows but I think they helped reach that price point you otherwise wouldn't have. 

@Thomas S. Unfortunately those are hard to come by in my area. There hasn't been one on the MLS in over 2 years. Crazy around here.

I will also mention, the hardest part about my area is finding houses. We are a college town, but the supply is limited and a good bit of people here are RE investors. So, it took me almost a year to find and negotiate each of those homes. 

My Dad and I own a few rentals together. We put up 0 cash as we leveraged some "paid for" land as our collateral on our first deal. We have two houses, House 1 - purchased for 135; we owe 135; worth about 165. House 2  - Purchase for 115, we owe 105; worth about 145.  Current cash flow is about $900/mo total after taxes, insurance, etc.  We have roughly 70 in equity. 

Where we live, even the good deals run at about 1%. The rent is equal to 1% of the home purchase. House#1 rents for 1450 (paid 135) house #2 rents for 1250 (paid 115). Those were both off market "good" deals. 

What would you do? Sell them both and 1031 into a new house? This also frees up land for collateral on another. They're both great houses so I hate to lose them. Any way to keep them and pull equity out? we've done no improvements. Comps vary so much here, the appraiser can make it appraise high or low! I've seen appraisers be 20-30k a part on the same property because comps are so varied. 

Welcome to the community Ryan! I am in Ruston and have a few rentals and am doing some flips. You mentioned you have a property management company, do you have your brokers license? I thought about doing the same thing but I think, in Louisiana, you're required to have a brokers license to manage property so I never went through with it.