All Forum Posts by: Bridgette Delva

Hi Robert, we are absolutely looking and working on a BRRRR deal right this moment! In the words of our good old fashioned billionaire friend, Warren Buffet,"be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful". When the market is uncertain, the best deals can be found!

Of course, that doesn't eliminate the need to run the numbers and weigh your personal risks but if you can take the risk, have the funding and find a deal, what's stopping you?!  If you are a flip investor, the risk is in how the housing market will do but your fall back could always be a LTR instead. 

What type of deals are you considering? Flips, wholesale, BRRRR??

@Justin Johnson I like Kody's advice to put your reserves in a MM or even a high interest bearing savings account, like we do. One thing that would help better quantify if you are putting enough reserves aside is to follow the percentage guidelines. 5-15% for repairs and maintenance, 3-10% fr vacancy, and 5-10% for capex. Capex reserves do vary greatly depending on the condition and type of home. The age of the roof, HVAC system and appliances play a role in how much you should put aside. To estimate this, assess the age of each and when they would need to be replaced, find out how much it would cost to replace and then divide the total replacement cost by the number of months remaining in the life.

Brandon Turner’s “The Book on Rental Property Investing” was extremely helpful in getting up started so I’d recommend reading or listening to it, good luck!

@Fred Cannon our choice is to use mortgages to build our investment portfolio. That is only because we are new and still working to build our portfolio and we also don’t have a network of like minded investors. We’re currently taking higher risks to accelerate this process.

I will say that our near term goal includes building our private money lender network so that we can move away from the bank mortgages so I guess my answer to your question is that we prefer private money lenders, not banks.

*gut job

@Steve Joseph if you have a home warranty, you should itemize the specific repairs the home warranty covers and assign a cost to those. Depending on what is covered, 10% capex could be a little on the high side. It also depends on the condition of your home.

For reserves, BP recommends 5-15% set aside for repairs & maintenance, 3-10% for vacancy but the amount of capex reserves depends on many factors.

How old is the roof, appliances, HVAC system? Knowing the age of these items can help you calculate when you’ll need to replace them and therefore how much you should put aside for capex each year & month.

For example, we put aside 5% for capex in our Roswell rental because the roof and appliances are all new. We’re also only putting aside 5% for repairs and maintenance because we did a total guy job renovation on the house.

You don’t want to over estimate and eat into your cash flow but you also don’t want to under estimate and be surprised with large non budgeted expenses.

@Rebekah Nation Dawn summed it up quite nicely! Never let tenants install anything, always use a professional. This helps ensure your tenant-landlord relationship remains just that, one based in a solid business relationship. The one exception would be if they own an official company that you would have considered anyway - in this rare instance I would still require a formal quote, invoice and pay them like any other professional.

Never take “favors” from your tenants.

@Tony Gaultney this is certainly not a direct answer to your question but I have found that Brandon Turners "Rental Property Investing" book goes into GREAT and specific detail about how much cash you should put aside for reserves from each month's rent.  It does not talk in depth about what amount of reserves you should start with but it would depend on your tolerance for risk.  Maybe do the calculation for your monthly reserves and multiply that by the number of months you feel comfortable with.  Hope this helps!

Hey fellow BPers - this is not a gimmick! (posting here per a recommendation from a BPer from another forum)

My husband (JD) and I relocated from Atlanta in January of this year and are looking to make connections locally. As odd as it may sound, we're looking to volunteer our time to help local rehab investors perform their renovations. We finished our last rehab in Dec in Atlanta & are renting it long term; we are also working on a rehab property in Florida but we love the hands on aspect of rehabbing.

Hoping this isn't too much of a stretch to use this forum to look for opportunities to volunteer our time in your residential rehab project. JD is an electrician by trade, along with many other talents; I'm the painter, tiler and a few other tricks so this is our attempt to volunteer some of our free time.

If you have a need or know of any rehab investor in SF (or a surrounding Bay area city) who would trust our free labor, we'd love to get connected and help someone else with their investment portfolio.

Again, this is not a gimmick and no strings attached - we're just hoping to learn more about the local market, make connections and help someone out in the process!

Thanks Brian, I'll give that a try!

Hey fellow BPers - this is not a gimmick!  

My husband (JD) and I relocated from Atlanta in January of this year and are looking to make connections locally. As odd as it may sound, we're looking to volunteer our time to help local rehab investors perform their renovations. We finished our last rehab in Dec in Atlanta & are renting it long term; we are also working on a rehab property in Florida but we love the hands on aspect of rehabbing. 

Hoping this isn't too much of a stretch to use this forum to look for opportunities to volunteer our time in your residential rehab project.  JD is an electrician by trade, along with many other talents; I'm the painter, tiler and a few other tricks so this is our attempt to volunteer some of our free time.

If you have a need or know of any rehab investor in SF (or a surrounding Bay area city) who would trust our free labor, we'd love to get connected and help someone else with their investment portfolio.

Again, this is not a gimmick and no strings attached - we're just hoping to learn more about the local market, make connections and help someone out in the process!