All Forum Posts by: Brian Holshouser

I am sorry if this is not the right place for this. It may fall under a general contracting forum.

So here’s the story, a few years back my Mother built a beautiful dream house down the hill a bit from us in a really beautiful location on 5 acres with lots of trees surrounding the area. She had the flood planes checked and everything and for about 3 years she had no issues with flooding whatsoever, even after heavy rains poured during the construction. There is a creek that runs a few months out of the year just east of her house. Her neighbor to the south dammed it up about a decade ago and several people have long since moved into the area so when the creek began to run less it was not much of a surprise.

In 2018 the owners of the 80 acre lot south of her began removing several dozens/hundreds of trees, many of them being ceders. The first moderate rain that fell in early 2019 resulted in my Mother’s creeks overflowing and her yard began to fill with water around her house.

We contacted the owners of the property to the south (where the water flows from) and they acted as if the flooding was no big deal and the tree removal had nothing to do with extra water flow. They continued the removal of hundreds of trees and now my Mother’s house, road and yard has suffered greatly from the massive trenches of water.

The water tends to pour in incredibly fast about an hour after a rain, so fast that it does not have time to flow through the creek beds and eventually into the river a mile up stream. I believe this has a lot to do with the fact that the neighbors have removed hundreds of trees from their land where the water was once greatly absorbed and mitigated flow. Now it floods their pond quickly and then the land between the pond and my mom’s and pours out onto my Mother’s land for an hour or two before it begins to recede to normal flow.

What action and options can be taken here? I want to do everything I can to make this right for my mother, especially since this is her dream home and it’s an event that seems like there should be a creative solution. She doesn’t have a ton of capital saved up so digging out massive trenches through her woods seems like it would be too expensive. Should she take legal action? Who does she need to call?

Thanks in advance!

As new investors, seeing a home that appears to be a fantastic deal slip through our fingers is pretty hard to swallow. Especially when it’s because we are still slow and have to double check every nook and cranny of our numbers and confirm our price estimates through a professional contractor. It really takes a blow to the motivation seeing all of your hard work fall flat for nothing.

As a seasoned dividend investor I know certain quality companies will dip and return to value levels again, even if i missed the boat the first time around. It’s good to have that experience to transpose to our real estate experience.

Going forward, we will learn from our mistakes and try to be ready faster.

I believe this is a common occurrence in real estate. Does anyone have a similar story? What lessons did you learn that helped to prevent it? How do you motivate contractors to look at your property faster?

Look forward to the responses.

@Alyssa Dyer thank you so much for the advice and insights. It means the world to us to hear the thoughts and advice from those who are more experienced in this.

I admit BRRRR is very scary from the perspective of a nooby. Especially with the profit margins on most properties right now. I really see how networking can lead to some amazing things in this business. That and a lot of hustle!

Can’t thank you enough for that information.

We have a lot a lot of hustling to do and we know there’s a lot to learn! Appreciate the lessons shared on here to avoid as much pain as possible!

@Alyssa Dyer Thank you so much! So the BRRRR strategy really seems like a great way to build a portfolio as well as secure our business with wealth. We may end up whole selling or partner shipping as well depending on how things go.

We’ve been interested in multi family homes. Love the idea of eventually owning a larger rental property like apartment complexes or even a trailer park.

As a more seasoned real estate investor, what type of real estate investing do you prefer?

Hello all! My Wife and I are just starting out in the real estate world but not in investing in general. We have about 10% of our expenses covered by passive income, mostly dividends.

With that said, we're ready for rental properties. The trick is, most of our money is either tied up in stock or in a TSP account. We also have good credit but it's from several years ago (about 5) as we don't currently use credit cards.

Should we wait until we have cash on hand and or more current credit to get approved/pre-approved or is it a waste of time?

We could use a chunk of the TSP as a down payment if we needed and have a few grand already saved up but it could take several months to reach that 25% and get more current credit established.

What if we come upon a really good deal in the mean time?

Thanks!

@Brian Holshouser So I didn’t realize Google auto logged us into the wrong account. This is our correct one. Sorry for any confusion.