All Forum Posts by: Collin Garbarino

Some of the suburbs (like Sugar Land and the Woodlands) have more building restrictions than Houston does. Duplexes and triplexes are exceedingly rare in some of these places. You might want to look for a place on the edge of Houston that's closest to your work. If you're working in the Woodlands and living in northern Houston your commute won't be bad because you'll be traveling in the opposite direction of most of the traffic.

In addition to age of property you should be thinking about location. Most of the better locations have older structures on them.

I'd like an update on this project too. 

Any unforeseen obstacles? Cost overruns? Market for flooded homes softening? Everything turned out perfectly?

I admit it. I chuckled out loud when I read this.

I've got a contractor working on a property right now. I went over what I needed him to do, and I gave him a third up front. His guys are getting all the materials. I'll pay him another third at the mid-way point of the job, and then the final third when he's done.

I wouldn't deliver materials if I'm using a contractor. If I was acting as my own contractor and finding various subs then I'd take a more active role.

If you were going to rehab and hold a flooded house, you'd probably come out ahead. It might be too early to flip those houses. I heard that realtors were warning clients off flooded homes.

203K loan sounds like a good idea.

You probably don't want to buy it and finance it through an LLC. If you did, you'd probably need 25% down and your interest rate would be a little higher because if you used an LLC the bank would treat it as a commercial loan.

If you want to limit your out-of-pocket, then you definitely need to look at FHA. However, you need to make sure that the higher level of financing doesn't wreck the numbers.

Sponsors pay for free food.

But besides the free food, I actually kind of like attending groups with sponsors. They're not a bad starting place for a newbie like me looking for referrals.

I can ask the people at the meet up, "Hey, have you used that lender over there? What about that contractor for rehabs?" Even if they haven't, they've usually heard something good or bad about them.

@David Krulac,

That's a fabulous tip. It helps shift the conversation from "getting tenants" to "keeping tenants."

Houston sounds like an outlier here. I wonder why landlords can get away without providing a refrigerator in SFRs here, when it's so common elsewhere.