All Forum Posts by: Chelsea Knapp

Nice work. Love seeing other buffalonians in here having success on the west side. We bought a double on the west side this time last year for $147, put $80 into it, and it appraised for $360. Each unit now rents for $1400 and we have rolled the refi money into other projects.

Hi, fellow Buffalonian here. We recently did a brrrr using a hard money lender on the acquisition and could've used them similarly on the rehab like you are planning. IMHO you are better off securing a personal line of credit or business line of credit and using that as it will be at a lower rate than the HML and you won't be paying a draw fee each time. We did this for our rehab and it was at 4.5% interest only

@Mindy Jensen we use Zelle for 3 units because those tenants were "grandfathered in" so to speak. Wanting to start putting systems in place we started using Tenant Cloud and put 2 new units on there and all renewals/new acquisitions will pay through ACH on the portal. Also, we had started an LLC and a business checking account which doesn't accept zelle payments.

We live/invest in Buffalo. Currently we house hack a double in North Buffalo, have 2 doubles in Kenmore, and just started the refinance on our first major brrrr on the westside. Have you researched where you would like to buy here?

@Ada Guerin-Hughes so far so good. A couple small hiccups that didn't result in anything major. Our closing kept getting delayed on account of the sellers attorney and then when we got word of closing it happened relatively quickly and Express' attorneys were working on other closings so they got our documents over to us at the final hour on a Friday and then their attorney didn't release funds to the seller until Tuesday which caused some friction amongst realtors but it got resolved. They had a steep attorney fee for not doing much (our guy did most of the work) and I had to send them a reminder to send our welcome packet to set up our payments which start this month (you prepay the first two months at closing). We have been working mostly with Max Chera (think he's Martin's son) and I have been impressed with his responsiveness. We text and he is good on the service end. He has also offered to run numbers on refinancing with them as they do 30 year fixed investment loans. He was always good about running numbers and projections back when we were analyzing properties as well. I'm shopping around small local banks for a better rate but Express would offer a faster close and we should be able to get about 5.5% with them so it's an option. We'd also keep the property in the LLC and out of our personal names as well which we are thinking of to perhaps expand into the short term rental space using personal mortgages at some point under vacation/2nd home mortgages.

@Josh Klemenich we live and invest in Buffalo. We have 2 Kenmore doubles, 1 North Buffalo double we house hack, and are closing on a West Side brrrr this week. West side prices seem to be shooting up in a big way so we had been looking for something that wasn't a complete gut. The place we found actually had no issues with the big ticket items ie roof, new windows, hvac, foundation, etc. but the interior is a complete eye sore. We had a current value and an ARV based on work scope done by a local appraisal company. Purchase price of $147k which is what it appraised for and ARV came back at 285k which worked out to $109 a square. I'm going into it planning on the west side coming with more risk than our current properties and that ARV depends on the appraiser that day, but that might give you an idea of what the west side could look like depending on the situation. We are in the position financially to take things in stride if they/when they go wrong and are learning along the way as well.

@Jesse Ottesen my fiancé and I have 2 doubles in Kenmore and I agree the taxes compared to being within city limits are a downside (it's all relative though), but we've had very good luck with tenants. Filled 3 apartments during Covid with no vacancy time and increased rents and there's definitely pride of ownership in the neighbors. Can I ask what you get in rent for the SFH? On occasion I see ones that need pretty decent rehabs pop up and am intrigued.

@Philip L. I will say the insurance is definitely more than owner occupied which was expected but perhaps do some more searching or talk to another broker. Ping me in 6 months and I will let you know the end result. We'll be refinancing through a local bank. Not having them involved in the rehab reduces the complexity of using them so I'm looking forward to getting the closing taken care of and after that we are just making monthly payments to them til refinancing. The appraisal was done through an independent company locally that local banks use so that has given us some confidence. In fact one of the banks we may refinance with said that appraisal company is one of the main three they use and we could potentially have the ARV appraisal transferred to our file with them and save on closing costs. We'll see

@Philip L. They have insurance requirements that they send you but nothing crazy and then I just sent that to our insurance broker who came back with 2 different quotes. The insurance for the rehab phase is different from after tenants are placed and it’s fully renovated. Rehab phase is a residential fire policy. They will also provide you with a quote from a group they work with but it was a bit more expensive so we didn’t use theirs.

@Philip L. We were supposed to close yesterday but being held up on the seller's attorney's end from title and search/survey. Our financing went through their underwriting and has been approved though as of mid last week so we are ready once the seller is. Had to have current and ARV appraisal done based on our work scope/rehab budget. ARV came back 30k higher than we were projecting so us and lender were happy. They are doing 85% acquisition costs and were going to do 100% of rehab. We opted out of using them for rehab to avoid additional costs at closing and draw/inspection fees during the rehab. I have been working with Max Chera primarily. So far I'm happy. He's been very responsive via text and calls which is nice to have when it's your first time using hard money.