All Forum Posts by: Brian Wingard

I have some areas I am not sure about. I see above people paying their monthly rental mortgage with the eidl. I thought you can not pay on federally backed loans which would be any bank loan correct?

I saw you can pay down business credit card debt since it is not a long term expense.

I am assuming I can not use that money to fix up a property that i was working on but if I had a separate invoice (AR) from a contractor for his labor costs that would fall under regular monthly expenses? 

Of course check with your accountant first just to verify with them.

@Jim Young One loophole that you can get away with is have the roofer write up the half roof repair for this year and since we are close to the end of the year right up the other half for 2020 that way you have two years you can write off each side if you are looking to keep it as a right off and not a depreciation. The entire roof gets done and it’s just a matter of having two receipts and technically legal since it may be done one week later into a new year.

I run into various scenarios. Sometimes I just want to finish a house and rent it quick. Instead of going overboard I may just buy a cheapo laminate which i know I will get maybe 5 years out of. There are some decent ones I can get for 50 cents a square foot and I can lay quick.  I buy these knowing I will change it eventually. Dealing with rentals if I do find a product I really enjoy I often try to find a good deal on a pallet of it because I can use it in multiple homes. You get what you pay for usually so in terms of brand loyalty I look for who will offer me the best deal at the present time. If it is a higher end rental I will buy more expensive flooring such as a hardwood as long as it fits the model of the house and makes sense. Lately I have been liking the vinyl planks and tile. Laminate unless you get a higher end one is garbage with water usually. If you were to use a mid range product I would go with a vinyl plank. They look great, durable and water resistant. A win from a rental standpoint.

In my opinion even if top/bottom or side by side you will always have a noise issue. I have a side by side duplex and this is always a concern of mine because if you have great tenants on one side adding a noisy tenant can certainly ruin that atmosphere. Not that you want to rule out tenants but if they have 3 kids running around you know it will get loud so maybe in your screening process think of tenants you want to rule out to avoid the issue.

You really need to know how many square ( 10x 10ft ) the foot is to give you a better idea. Also any hazards such as height to the roof. If the roof is really high most will charge extra. As said above all of these factor in.

@Jesse Hobbs Thank you! This has been a learning process for me with a few things. I had multiple things add up which were not large amounts individually but the total certainly messed me up. Lesson learned and moving forward. Thank you again for the help

Thank you @Andrew Postell I am all about learning more and more. I always felt you never truly stop learning. I think in my situation the part that messed me up was multiple small things that added up over time. First is doing all my own work and taking too much time. Turned out awesome but spent a lot due to time spent on the house. Also I am meeting with the appraiser again and I will be asking her a lot more questions on the process as what truly they look for in a house. I think I overspent in multiple areas of the home as well but got an amazing rent. Will it pay for my mistake? Yes but it used up a lot of my funds for future projects. 

I think my biggest thing was I did compare this home to the area and felt it would get a certain price and came slightly below so after you factor in the 80% it did not match what I truly expected it to be. I am realistic on what I felt it would price for.

For myself I am not bad at estimating but I do not cut corners like most contractors do. If I see an issue while doing tear out or construction I assess and fix any issues so it does not become an issue later which this one had quite a few issues that were not visible to the eye. Maybe more percentage of unknown into my equation would help this out. Also the light things add up, tools, blades, screws and other small things certainly added up a ton doing a whole house compared to partial flips.  Thank you for all the suggestions and I will look into them to learn more.

My name is Brian and I have been part of biggerpockets for a few years now. I am on my 4th property and having some ups and downs. A few of the properties I have bought I did expect to break even or slightly appraise higher than what I bought them for. Those were duplex homes and the cash flow was right. Now I have done a few properties where I bought them cheap and put in a fair amount of money to rehab them and make them 1000% better than before. When i would go to refinance the bank assigns an appraiser to view the homes and I keep feeling like they are coming in a lot less than what they should be. Before buying them I did study for similar houses in the area to get a baseline both high and low on a property. Some I feel I had to do a little extra work on to get them to my standards as well than originally anticipated. My big question is do you have any tips for myself to appraise what I am doing better so I get idea on overall value. The part that is messing me up when I refinance you can only do it for 80-85% so that is not paying down my line of credit enough so with each house the line is not being removed to what i would like to see. Does other people who brr face not having the line of credit wiped out as they did not raise the value of the home enough to still profit after the 80% allowed refinance? I am trying to learn how to set myself up for higher appraisals and also to pay more of my line down each time or actually profit from the equity. as I felt I should.

1 Would switching banks be an option to get a better appraisal on my homes and refinance to basically start over in a sense?

2 I think I was naive in thinking my appraisals would factor in more of the materials used to upgrade my homes. I just redid a more expensive home that gets a great rent but can you get away with using just laminates, store bought cabinets and plain every day items to get the maximum appraisal? I always assumed better flooring and other supplies would add to the overall value but the more I look into this it seems they are just comping square footage to comparable homes, bathrooms, rooms in home and not so much focused on what is actually done to the home itself. It feels like they just want a somewhat updated home and types of material does not matter as long as the home looks nice. Is this right because if so I have been spending way too much on enhancements.

3 So now that I have a lot of my line of credit used because my appraisals did not come back as I needed them to be what path would you take to get back to paying down the line while still moving forward? Would you go for more of a duplex route to raise more cash flow to pay down the line? Any and all advice would greatly be appreciated.

Brian Wingard

My name is Brian and I have been part of biggerpockets for a few years now. I am on my 4th property and having some ups and downs. A few of the properties I have bought I did expect to break even or slightly appraise higher than what I bought them for. Those were duplex homes and the cash flow was right.  Now I have done a few properties where I bought them cheap and put in a fair amount of money to rehab them and make them 1000% better than before. When i would go to refinance the bank assigns an appraiser to view the homes and I keep feeling like they are coming in a lot less than what they should be. Before buying them I did study for similar houses in the area to get a baseline both high and low on a property. Some I feel I had to do a little extra work on to get them to my standards as well than originally anticipated. My big question is do you have any tips for myself to appraise what I am doing better so I get idea on overall value. The part that is messing me up when I refinance you can only do it for 80-85% so that is not paying down my line of credit enough so with each house the line is not being removed to what i would like to see. Does other people who brr face not having the line of credit wiped out as they did not raise the value of the home enough to still profit after the 80% allowed refinance? I am trying to learn how to set myself up for higher appraisals and also to pay more of my line down each time or actually profit from the equity. as I felt I should. 

1 Would switching banks be an option to get a better appraisal on my homes and refinance to basically start over in a sense?

2 I think I was naive in thinking my appraisals would factor in more of the materials used to upgrade my homes. I just redid a more expensive home that gets a great rent but can you get away with using just laminates, store bought cabinets and plain every day items to get the maximum appraisal? I always assumed better flooring and other supplies would add to the overall value but the more I look into this it seems they are just comping square footage to comparable homes, bathrooms, rooms in home and not so much focused on what is actually done to the home itself. It feels like they just want a somewhat updated home and types of material does not matter as long as the home looks nice. Is this right because if so I have been spending way too much on enhancements.

3 So now that I have a lot of my line of credit used because my appraisals did not come back as I needed them to be what path would you take to get back to paying down the line while still moving forward? Would you go for more of a duplex route to raise more cash flow to pay down the line? Any and all advice would greatly be appreciated.