All Forum Posts by: Chris Carollo

It's been a while since I've been able to make one but I hope I can make this one! @Account Closed Can you make it?

Deren, 

Great questions about Habitat. I'm a board member of the Habitat for Humanity(Illinois) State Support Organization. Hopefully I can shed some light on your questions. Each Habitat Affiliate operates a little differently but let me share my experiences from working with our local affiliates. 

1-Land Donation-Land to build on might be acquired by donation from individuals, local city/county or might be bought on the open market.

Each local Habitat’s family selection committee selects homeowners based on three criteria: The applicant’s level of need, their willingness to partner with Habitat, their ability to repay a mortgage through an affordable payment plan.

As part of their willingness to partner, Habitat’s home buyers invest hundreds of hours of their own sweat equity working alongside volunteers and other Habitat homeowners.

2-Habitat Housing tends to be seen as a stabilizing force in the community. Habitat also does something called "A brush with Kindness" where they might work in the surrounding blocks improving the exterior of non Habitat houses as well. 

3-Trends with Housing-The family tends to stay in the house for a long time. Typically the way that the financing works, a 1st and 2nd mortgage on on the property for a $100k House it might be an $80k 1st note and $20k 2nd. The 2nd note does not need to get paid back unless they go to sell the house in the first 10 years in which case it would be do. The goal is to provide affordable housing while eliminating the thought that someone would try to flip it. 

4-If the community meets your criteria, I would consider having a Habitat house as a sign that stabilization or more investment is coming. 

Overall Habitat is a great organization that is always in need of help and volunteers. There are all sorts of roles depending on what you're interested in.. Building, Operations, Finance, Family Selection, Fundraising, Marketing, etc

Having just bought a building from a city(it was vacant) you might be pleasantly surprised at how much information that city is willing to share with you.  If you can, head to city hall and start asking about the building, who is in charge of the process, etc. 

You still need to run your own #'s to determine if its a good deal but the city should be able to help you as well. Why are they selling? What vision do they have for the property, etc? 

In our instance we were able to acquire the building at much below market rate but we have a redevelopment agreement in place with the city with some stipulations around not tearing it down and rebuilding the facade.  It also took over a year to get through the process..

Good luck!

Vernon-I think so many questions need to get answered before anyone here can give you a deep and thoughtful answer. If he only owes $300k on a $1.7M+ valued property the bank would be giving him plenty of attention as he has built up a ton of equity. 

Have you performed a Pro Forma? Who will be managing the property? What's the "as completed" valuation? Are you saying that he'll only require you to make the 300k Construction loan payments for the first year, in essence delaying the $1.4M note payments for a year? 

It sounds like it could be a very interesting opportunity but I think a lot more info would help everyone give you the best answers! Good luck!

Looking forward to making this event. I've missed the last couple but am going to make it this time!

@Gulliver R. The thought of a BRRR Strategy is to take back all of your money(or most of it) once the work is done. If you purchase the house for $100k and it costs $50k to rehab/hold but is worth more than $200k once rehabbed, you are in good shape. The second part of the BRRR Strategy is to pull your money back out, which usually allows for a 75%LTV(Loan to Value). In this example, you should be able to provide a lender that will loan you $150k(75% of the Value) on the property allowing you to take out all the money you've invested in it.

You'll now have a house to rent out that you don't have a dollar invested in, has $50k in instant equity and should hopefully cash flow for you.  You can take the cash that you had used for the rehab/purchase and apply it to another property. 

@Chris Mason  Can you share what you are doing with Google Forms? I'm incredibly familiar with it but haven't plugged it into the real estate side of my life. 

@Christopher Herrera 

DOM = Days on Market

We ended up not restaining the cabinets on a recent project. The cabinets were brand new. We decided to replace the counters( To Granite), add some pulls and fix the backsplash above the sink. Fixed the the tile alignment above the sink with some glass tile.

redfin.com, you can filter to sold properties only. My assumption is that you are looking as you want to learn a market to help identify deals. You'll probably be using a broker too.. as you ask for their help see what type of market trends or sale records they can pull up for you. But don't waste their time if you don't plan on working with them but rather just want to pump them for information.