All Forum Posts by: Carl Schmitt

Rather than renting the store front, could you put you're own laundromat? Possibly partner with an experienced laundromat owner? I know someone that evicted the tenant in the store front of their apartment building and did this. He sold it 20 years ago and I still hear h talk about how great it was

Thanks Derreck! That's a great site and I never knew it existed. Out of curiosity, what is required to become certified? Also, how much more does it cost to gut a lead paint house vs a typical gut rehab?

Ken, I don't want to stereotype, but in my sales job I go to 2-4 different houses per day. I don't generally see too many low income homes with a lot of "pride" (to put it nicely). And we only work with homeowners, not renters. I can only imagine what the inside of some rentals look like. Wear and tear is just a business expense as a landlord, but the more people you have living there, the higher that expense goes. In my opinion, anyway.

My parents had a 4 bedroom house a few years ago. The tenants were low income here on work visas. They used to call the last day of the month to remind my father to pick up next month's rent the next day. The down side- tons of people living there. I don't think there was ever a final head count, but it was a lot. When they left, the place was close to a gut rehab. Not because they intentionally trashed it, just major wear and tear from too many occupants.

Regarding the window question, check to see if FL is an energy star state. I work in Ma and CT. Mass is an energy star state, CT is not. In Ct, you can basically put anything you want for windows. In Mass, you must have at least a .30 U-factor (check the label in the top left corner, lower is better for U-factors). There are pretty severe fines for installing a product that don't meet energy star codes.

Judging by the responses so far, all the money spent on legal advice would make for a pretty nice pool of funds to work with :) Only joking of course...
On a serious note (no pun intended), how can the laws for raising funds possibly be so vague? It seems like if you spoke to 100 different attorneys, you'd get 100 different answers as to what is or isn't legal. If 100 people ended up in court, you'd probably have just as many different outcomes.

Bill Gulley, using your partnership idea, it sounds like the goal would be to eliminate the investor from truly being considered "passive". Is that correct? If I'm understanding correctly, each investor keeps their funds in their own account, and when the time comes to purchase a property, the details are sent to be looked over by the investor, and upon approval, funds are moved as needed. In the eyes of the law, does this become a partnership rather than a security?
Never having done this before, it seems like the person that gets the short end of the stick is the medium sized organization. The mom and pop companies can find enough personal friends to fund the limited amount of deals. The big time organizations have the cash to pay attorneys to make everything legal. It's the person that has tapped out all their personal connections, but maybe doesn't have 50k to pay an attorney. Just a thought...

Daniel, I'm not an expert but that doesn't sound right to me, I have a hard time paying someone for a service they really aren't performing, if the tenant is already there, what time/costs did the property manager put out to warrant the fee?

In my experience, when a contractor doesn't want to break the price down by unit, it's usually for a reason. I worked for a company that sold soffit and trim coil. As a salesman, we were told to negotiate on the total price, not on itemized products, that way, you can put more profit in the deal. Good for the contractor, bad for the customer.
As far as pricing, these are the costs in my area. I'm sure it's a little different where you are but close enough for estimate purposes.
Exterior steel doors should cost 2-250 for the door, maybe another 100 bucks to install.
Gutter replacement should run $5-7/ foot. If you're going to repair them, you might as well replace them with seamless so you don't have to worry about it in the future.
If the wood on the fascia needs to be replaced, that should run roughly $3/foot installed. If you wrap the fascia in aluminum, that will cost you between 5 and 8 bucks per foot installed.

Without knowing how many feet of gutters, ect I couldn't tell you if 1200 is a good price. If they're interior doors and just minor repairs, I'd say 1200 is probably high. If you need 2 exterior doors, getting a long stretch of gutters replaced, and several screens, 1200 could be low.

I think establishing credibility as to why your offer is going to be so much lower is important. I think a lot of people have the mindset that, "my house will be worth 210 fixed up, it's needs 30-40k in work, so why are you only offering 120k? " This is where you really need to build value in the service you're offering. Just like purchasing anything, if you don't see value in the asking price, you'll never buy. If the seller doesn't understand why you're offer is lower than expected, they're likely to keep looking.

As far as pre-qualifying over the phone, if you are a wholesaler that has more appointments than hours in the day, I'd skip any appointment that isn't ready to sell at your price today. If you're starting out like Sean, I wouldn't be turning down any appointment. Worst case, you learn something new. Best case, everything they told you on the phone is their own negotiating technique. In my sales job, I can't tell you how many times I've had people who wouldn't let me in the door. 2 hours later, they write me a check for 20k to fix their house. Even if they said on the phone they wouldn't sell for less than 200k, you may show up, they hear your pitch, you could just change their mind.

I'm glad to hear you call it standard! I suppose the only thing out of the ordinary is how we want to fund it, and that we aren't builders by trade.