All Forum Posts by: Brian Pulaski

@Bob Prisco the biggest issues in this part of the country... taxes. A $200k house making good rental income looks awesome. Add in some will have $10-12,000 annual property tax. Now that deal is probably a dud. It affects flipping as well.

I’m running numbers on a CT property now and I’m amazed. It never occurred to me, but the title insurance I had on my last NY deal was 6-7 times MORE than it is as I crunch my CT deal. Thousands of dollars more for title insurance you will almost never use. There are lots of nuances between locations, even some that are within an hour of each other.

I’m not a wholesaler or an agent, but have dealt with both.

I would assume most sellers want the wholesale for the ease. After all if you wholesale, you are putting it under contract, so in their eyes the house is under contract on its way to closing. If listed on the MLS they now have the parade of buyers to work through before even going under contract. Here in NY I have seen it take over a month from offer to "under contract".

As far as separate agent deals with wholesale. I assume yes. Your broker would most likely have a strong say in what he/she allows with their business and your investments.

I only flip, and although not in CT anymore I’m looking at a house in CT for a fix and flip. As much as the CT market is tough, the NY market can be even tougher! 

Any good seller (or their agent) would require you get a proposal and not just take you at your word. Sure you could ask for $10k off on a $70k house. But expect the seller to balk at that. Personally I have masons I can call and get an actual estimate to use as a negotiation tool. My best deal had $25k worth of foundation work needed.

What kind of cracks? Almost all concrete will crack. Hairline cracks I wouldn’t even flinch. Large gaps with heaving I would have an expert inspect. None would make me run if the numbers were good before seeing that issue. Get some real estimates and negotiate from there.

The few wholesaler “deals” I have been involved with usually have weird rules regarding the seller. Rules I don’t always agree with, but at the end of the day it isn’t on me to interfere there (pretend to not be a buyer, not speak to seller, etc).

I actually just looked through some documents yesterday and turns out the wholesalers title company/insurance was over THREE times what I normally pay (and almost seven times what I paid in my last market). Not to mention it took a lot of effort to get them to commit to “clear title”. They also required a lot of documentation from the wholesaler for some reason.

If you have hired a title company I would stick with what they say. If they can’t get the info they need and advise you the deal could have issues, I would probably walk. I always trust the people on my “team” and head their advice.

It is a sellers market and EVERYONE and their brother is flipping. I accidentally saw a list of recipients from a wholesaler a while back. There were hundreds of names... good deal hits the market and there are 20 offers in a day or two.

With that many buyers, wholesalers can pretty much ask what they want and get it. Is it greedy... eh to each their own. I bought a flip from a wholesaler who made a substantial amount of a small dollar house. The deal did still work for me, but I would have loved to get it for $10-15,000 cheaper (wholesaler still would have made good money), but that wasn’t possible.

I only kick myself (not the wholesaler) on that deal as that street was on my direct mail marketing list and somehow they got to the seller first. I would have offered the seller quite a bit more, but it of course didn’t happen that way.

I have used both RTACabinetStore and Lily Ann Cabinets. Both I had very few issues. The issues I did have, were addressed by each quickly. Quality seemed about the same, and price wise they were both in line.

I believe when I switched from Lily Ann to RTA a while back I compared the same order side by side and RTA was a bit cheaper. RTA has a LOT of white/off white shaker styles to choose from. I haven’t been on Lily Ann’s website recently.

Hudhomestore.com. Will need a HUD realtor and if in an attorney state a HUD attorney. In my area I've found HUD attorneys charge quite a bit more for these houses.

Sufficient or not I can’t say (although I have had a bunch of houses with 100 amp panels and no issues) but that price is good assuming quality permitted work.

As a cash buyer, a good deal to me only matters what my numbers say. If you have a house worth $250k (ARV) needing $50k in work (my numbers) and you want $180k... that's not a deal. If you want $120k... that's probably a deal.

As much as the end buyer will run their own numbers, you as the wholesaler need to know a deal is a deal to put it under contract and not string a seller along with a “dud” deal no one will buy.