All Forum Posts by: Carl Schmitt

To the people in favor of a discount for early rent- Have you run into an issue with tenants claiming they sent the rent check in before the 1st but it didn't arrive until after?  It's easy enough to write an earlier date on the check and now you're stuck trying to collect the discount they feel entitled to.

I agree with @Michael Noto.  Ted spoke at a meetup in Manchester recently and really knows his stuff.  

Aaron hit the nail on the head. It has to be a balance between someone with hands on experience and someone savvy enough to manage an entire project. As with anything in life, communication skills are essential. If you are having issues with your crews listening to your project manager, either you need new crews or your project manager doesn't know their audience. Call it "profiling" if you'd like, but you can't communicate with the building inspector the same way you talk to your crew members. People like people just like themselves.

Who you hire, I think, also depends on how much you expect them to do. Are they just collecting bids for you and unlocking the door in the morning for the guys? Are they ordering material? Pulling permits? Is your goal to hire someone that can run the whole show when your sitting on the beach? These are all going to be different people and all come with different costs.

Good luck!

this could turn into a political debate quickly, but I'll try to avoid that. The benefit to a free market is that it's self-policing. If you truly are a greedy, evil, law-breaker, the market will put you out of business much faster than any government could.

If it wasn't for flippers/rehabbers, think of the enormous amount of vacant and vandalized homes every town would have. Everyone knows that vacant homes lead to squatters, drug dealing, etc. So who is really the evil person in this situation? The investor that is essentially reducing crime and being paid for their time, effort, and risk? Or the person that scolds entrepreneurs for providing a service because they feel the investor made "too much money".

As a side note, it always amuses me when I hear people talk about how their boss is making "too much money" off their labor but then demand a raise for no extra effort put in.

Lastly, congrats to you, Bryan, on a project well done, you awful capitalist.... Look at you providing a nice home at a fair price, it's disgusting... (sarcasm)

I agree with Matthew. For a regular every day customer, 1/3 upon signing contract, 1/3 when we start, and 1/3 on completion. It's the customer's remodeling project, they should pay for it. We do have 1 big real estate company and we do a lot of their commercial work. I don't worry too much about payment terms with them because we have done work for them before and will continue to do so. So this week I may be starting a roof for them without a deposit, but I'm getting paid for the roof I finished a week ago. it all works out in the long run.

With subs, they NEVER get paid for labor up front. We purchased/order all of the materials. If they need nails, caulk, etc, they can go to one of my suppliers where I have an account, or to HD and the cashier calls and I give my credit card over the phone. There is really no reason they should need money for work they haven't done yet.

I don't know what things cost in FL, but where I am, there is no way you could get a gutted duplex liveable with 30k. Well, I guess it depends what you mean by gutted. If it needs new electrical, plumbing, sheetrock, fixtures, everything, not a chance. If it needs patching of walls, new flooring, some fixtures, cosmetics, then you could probably do it.

Also keep in mind, the benefit to buying a gutted property is that you have instant equity when it's done. if you buy the rent ready or the gutted property and end up at 45k all in, what would be the point of putting time, effort, and lost rent into the gutted property. Now, if you can buy the gutted property, have it fixed, rented, and be all in for only 35k, now it makes sense.

Ryan,

I'm going to respectfully disagree with your point that savvy investors don't need to be sold. I agree that they aren't going to fall for a cheap sales pitch. However, everything and everyone needs to be sold at some point because people make decisions emotionally, not logically. Want proof? What sells more; alcohol or bibles? Even though alcohol makes no logical sense, people purchase it day in and day out.

Sales, for some reason, has a negative connotation. To say you "sold" someone should not be a bad thing. You simply convinced someone to think the same way you do about a certain subject. In this case, you convinced the investor you're the right guy to invest in.

Be careful. I read a post on BP a year or so ago about this very thing. They got the entire rehab done, and then got caught up in the home inspection because there was no permit. They essentially had to start over, if I remember correctly.

In Ct, we rebuilt a small porch for a customer. When I went to get the permit, I found that the original deck builder didn't pull a permit. It was past the zoning boundaries for the area, and before some convincing, they were not going to let us tear it down or rebuild it.

Director of Operations

The best sales pitches use 3rd party examples and stories. If I wanted to get someone interested in investing without outright asking them to, I'd say something like, " it's incredible, when I first started, it seemed so hard to find people that wanted to invest, but after they saw the kind of money we could make, now people are banging down my doors to invest" Keep it conversational. The best sales pitches don't sound like a sales pitch. If they have any interest, they should start asking you questions about it. "So how does that work? Do those people investing have to do the work, too or just invest?" Now they're the ones asking how to invest rather than you asking them to invest.