All Forum Posts by: Brian V.

My electric company, Southern California Edison, is changing its net metering rules to become very unfavorable to new solar customers. If I get solar before April 14th, I'm grandfathered into the current rules (NEM 2.0) for 20 years, and it is much more favorable to me.

I'm looking at a 6.4 kW/10,000+ annual kWh system under a power purchase agreement (PPA) for $155 per month with no escalator. It is cheaper than ownership because I do not qualify for the 30% federal tax credit.

My question is, if I want to sell my house (I live in Victorville, CA), will the PPA contract grandfathered in at NEM 2.0  be a problem to pass on to the buyer, or will I lose a lot of money paying off the PPA?

I realize we might be entering some difficult times in Real Estate, and that some home improvements don't pay for themselves when you sell.  I've read that PPAs are a hard pill to swallow, but this PPA has no escalator and will be grandfathered into more favorable net metering rules.

I'm just getting started. A lot of the things I watch and read talk about making many offers. What is the best way to make offers. I'm pretty sure that if the property is listed by a realtor, they would handle the offer and contract, but what if I'm marketing to motivated sellers that aren't working with an agent, and I want to shoot them an offer? How do I do this? Do I send some kind of letter of intent? Do I use my own contract and fill out a contract each time an offer is made?

If anyone can clear this stuff up for me I would appreciate it.

Hi, my name is Brian Varbel, and I'm a homeowner in Victorville, CA. I'm looking to buy my first rental property locally or even out of state. I'm very interested in the BRRRR method. I have been studying real estate investing for 20 years, but never pulled the trigger except for 1 house I bought at a discount from a motivated seller 20 years ago, and another house I picked up after the 2008 housing crash that I live in now that has appreciated significantly in 10 years.

Now I'm focused. I am in the process of finding a team of people to work with.  My goal is to do 1 deal in the next 3 to 6 months. I realize that the first deals are so important to the learning curve. Sometimes it feels like a huge leap of faith, and that's a challenge to overcome. 

I hope to connect with some like-minded people here on Bigger Pockets.

I've been in contact with private and hard money lenders to finance a purchase and rehab. My question is what types of lenders would I use to refinance a property, pull cash out, and hold. Can I get preapproved for this refinance before I even have a property? I'm afraid that I'm going to pull all the stops to acquire a property only to find that I can't refinance it and pull the money back out. What are my options then, because holding costs are expensive...do I have to sell at that point as a final exit strategy?

Thanks for your reply Dougless. So how do I make an offer that allows me to change the price if I discover through due diligence that the rehab is going to cost more than I originally planned? What kind of contingencies do I put into my contract? Do I use a real estate agent, or do I bring my own contracts?

I"m just getting started, and I'm really interested in the BRRRR method. Let's say I find a distressed property that needs work done. I need to know the cost of this work in order to make a proper offer and see the price I can get justifies the repairs. In other words, how do I make offers if I personally don't know how to estimate the costs of a rehab?

I live in Southern CA. I own a house. My wife and I live on a fixed income and can live anywhere. I thought about house hacking in Southern California, but the numbers are crazy. Where in the US can I move and get the following deal: buy a 4 plex, live for free in 1 unit with 20% down, and get $100-$200 additional per unit cash flow. We are willing to move anywhere in the US. We'd like not to live in the middle of nowhere...perhaps an up and coming college town near an airport.

@Debra Grumbach I will look into it. However the main reason I was eyeing a 4 plex is because I can get a very high dollar FHA loan with 3.5% down in my area. I have good credit, but I don't have wads of cash except for a small savings and about $50,000 I would get from the sale of my own home after selling expenses. I was kinda looking at trading my SFH for a Multi Unit house hacking situation and going from there. More than 5 units that might be priced better for my needs wants and goals sounds interesting...however I'm lacking serious down payment cash. I know there are ways to structure deals and find money, but the possibilities overwhelm me.

I've decided not to make an offer...an exact sister property just sold this week for about the asking price. I'm not gonna spin my wheels and offer $400K less than asking even though this property has been sitting for 4 months. I'm gonna keep looking. The property was located in Rancho Cucamonga 

@Daniel Y.

But don't I make money when I buy? If I can't justify the purchase based on the actual income rather than someone's wish price...shouldn't I make an offer? Doesn't the income of the property have to justify the financing...I mean, not everyone can just pay cash and earn 4% on their money. What about the 1% rule or other such matrix...following that I should offer $350,000. It feels like investors where I live don't want me to make any money. The housing market could crash tomorrow and my 920,000 property could be worth 500,000....I can't make offers based on someone's wish price. In my circumstance the offer has to make sense with 3.5% down...is that too much to ask...

Side note,,,should I look to brrrr the uglier properties crossing my desk...the funny thing is, they still want top dollar for their rents...In So Cal I'm not seeing any deals based on asking prices. I'm willing to offer a reverse engineered price to these properties, but it is gonna be 100's of thousands of dollars lower than their wish price.

what do I do?