All Forum Posts by: Brian Pleshek

I am also in Cincinnati, but currently only do SFHs currently.  I might branch out into multiplexes, but i'm not ready to pull the trigger yet.  It's a bit difficult to ask what neighborhoods you would raise your child in as many people have different opinions on what that means.   Are you talking from strictly a safety standard, then there are plenty of online resources for crime statistics and grade neighborhoods on a letter scale based on such.  If you're talking schools, well then are you looking at good public schools or semi-privates and privates?  Religious schools?  There are online resources that rank school districts as well.  Do you care about parks to play in, walk score, access to bus lines?  Do you prefer living in the city or suburbs?  If you get a little more specific, you might get more answers AND maybe hit more keywords on people's alerts.

Brian

Welcome @Jacob Rozansky.  While you're doing your studies, you have a captive "audience" of contacts for future networking.  Teachers, fellow students, guest lecturers, intern opportunities.  Fill your rolodex.

Brian

Welcome @Brandon Harris.  If you're going to start flipping be aware that it isn't as easy as they make it look on TV.  It's good that you're starting early.  Start reading everything you can here.  Listen to the podcasts while you are commuting everywhere.  Even listen to the ones that don't talk about what you're planning so that you can immerse yourself in your new endeavor.  You pick up great tips about flipping even in the pod casts about note buying and selling because maybe the guy who does that used to flip, etc.  

Also, since you're still young, I would encourage you to stay out of non-property debt.  No cars, credit cards(except what you need to build credit and pay for your property expenses).  These things will drain you of valuable resources including the debt to income ratio which will possibly prevent you from acquiring the properties you want.

Also, while you're flipping the house, learn from the contractor how to do certain types of repairs so that you can do them yourself until you get too many deals that it isn't feasible to do yourself.  Also, get good at estimating repair.  Learning how to do certain things will help you figure out some of those costs so that later when you're just bidding them and contracting out the work, you can make realistic estimates.

A flipper will live and die by their ability to buy low enough and have a good handle on expenses for rehab. Also you'll need to learn how to estimate a good ARV. A realtor can help, but i've found that many are just not good at doing that.

Good luck

Brian

Welcome to BP @Jack London.  You'll probably need more than 12 duplexes to get that kind of cash flow if you're financing.  You have to make sure you account for all of your costs when you are making your plans.  Your cash flow might be something like this(and i'm sure i'm forgetting stuff):

monthly gross rents 

- mortgage payment

- vacancy(1/12 of gross rent) 

- repair fund(10% of gross rents)

- capital expense fund(10% of gross rents)

- taxes(1/12 tax bill)

- insurance (1/12 insurance bill)

- marketing fees (1/12 annual costs for marketing)

- management fees (1/12 annual cost for management EVEN if you manage yourself otherwise you're buying a job)

I'm not saying don't do it, but you need to know what you're getting into.  Read, read, and do more reading.  At least 50 hours of research before you think about doing things.  Fortunately, you have a good resource at BP.  Then you'll want to figure out what you want  to do.   You say buying duplexes.  That's great.  At least it's a start of a plan.  You'll need to have a team to help you out.  At least a contractor, probably an agent, maybe a wholesaler, a lawyer, and an accountant.  

Also, remember, you make your money when you BUY a house, not when you sell it.  So don't be paying market values for things

Listen to the podcasts while you're driving around.  Immerse yourself in your new business with education.  Did I mention reading?

Good luck.

Brian

Also, listen to the pod casts while you commute to work or where ever.  There are a lot of good ones and you never know what one thing you'll come away with that might pay off big.

Brian

Welcome @Michael Abate. First thing is don't be afraid to walk away from a deal where the numbers don't make sense. There will ALWAYS be another property. But you may not recover from a really bad deal. Also, as others have said, you may not qualify for FHA if you don't live there. Also, if the house is rent ready, then I wouldn't put $5k into it for touch ups unless this will significantly alter the cash flow. $5000 is $416 over a 12 month period.

Brian

Welcome to BP, @Michael Rutkowski.  I'd love to hear your stories.

Congratulations and welcome to BP, @Kenneth Lee.  I hope you a way to make money because at age 18 you probably don't have much of a credit history which will make it difficult to get funding.  1000 in 7 years is quite aggressive, but I wish you luck on it.  If you're able to do it, write a book and sell a course.  Anyway, do you have rehabbing skills yourself or are you going to contract it out?  Obviously if you're going to be shooting for 143 units a year you will not be doing the work yourself.  This means you need to build a team of professions that include multiple contractors, a lawyer, an accountant, likely multiple wholesalers and so on.

You might be doing a lot of rehab and sweat equity building at first because of fewer resources.  It took me 4 days to paint the house I just bought. I can really do a good paint job, but i'm not handy with plumbing, electrical, flooring, etc. So I contract it out.  Once you scale to a larger number of units, you just can't do this yourself. 

Good luck.

Brian

Good question @Andrew Hunt.  I will be following this discussion.  I might want to do the same locally.

Brian

Welcome @Breone Dupree.  I would also like to know what you do in Ohio.  I'm from Cincinnati myself.

Brian