All Forum Posts by: Chris Hopper

Anyone have a good appraiser in Asheville NC area?  Have 6 cabins (all on same lot) needing appraisal on in Cherokee.

I'm guessing you were looking at higher priced homes and that's the issue. There's deals out there. You're also looking in some of the hottest areas in town, so you have to account for that as well - less cash flow, but super good appreciation. With that said, you can't build a whole portfolio just on appreciation. I went broke in '08 trying that, lol. There's deals on MLS, however every wholesaler is writing offers daily. You'll need to build relationships with agents to snag anything off there.

I'm a buyer if you want to sell!!!

Good stuff @Vijaianand Thirunageswaram.  I learned this same lesson may years ago.  Every single rental I get, the first thing I do is change to PEX.  About $3500 and worth every penny.  I slept well at night through this storm knowing I had no issues.  I didn't have a pipe bust on any rental.  The only pipe I had bust was is a flip we were doing that I didn't change!  Was scheduled to close in middle of storm of course.  Got it fixed and still closed the deal.  Cost us about $1500, but not bad in the grand scheme of things.  

Like said above, if you are planning on keeping anything as a rental, you're a fool not to change to PEX.  You don't want to leave your $$$ in the hands of your tenants hoping they do what you told them.  If you really think they are going to turn off the water and drain the pipes, that's not happening!  

No way I'd drop almost 60K to make $200/mo. That's insane! 4% COC?? lol. Houses in that price range don't make good rentals. If you just have plenty of money to throw around and want to ride the appreciation train, then go for it. You need to be looking under 250K (under 200K preferably). Those are the properties that will cash flow.

It's a whole other discussion about putting the 20% down, but it's something I would never do and you would need a boat load of cash to ever scale.

@Zachary Khushf Spot on!  They are notorious for using comps not in the same neighborhood.  Unfortunately there's always new investors who don't know any better so they will continue to do so and prey on the newbies.  They churn through employees as well.  You can always spot the newbie to NW with their Facebook post " I sell 30-50 properties per month, reach out if you want in", or something to that effect.  Quite comical.

@Cortney Arenstein To your comment about having a license, just because someone has a license doesn't mean they know how to accurately comp a property. There's also a couple other good sites outside of MLS that provide the same data and allow people to run comps. I have access to MLS and have checked my numbers against the other sites and they're pretty accurate --- as long as you know how to interpret the data (same as you need to with MLS).

@Sandeep Majumder You will definitely have a hard time and very limited deals waiting on a wholesaler to bring you a flip deal in one of the hottest areas.  There's no reason for them to sell it that cheap when buy/hold investors are paying much more.  Even the iBuyers are paying 85%.  You will definitely need to be doing your own marketing to find a nice flip deal.  That's not to say one won't slip through that works for you, but there won't be many.

Go to their website and fill out the change of ownership forms.  Both Houston Housing and Harris County have the form on their site.  

@Mark Brown True, but you can definitely get a small range that will fit.  I use per sf numbers all the time.  It's one of the metrics I track for this reason.  Very easy to walk a house in 5 mins and know my numbers or for bidding on houses sight unseen.  So yes, you most definitely can do it.