All Forum Posts by: Corey Schaecher

@Heather Henriques, my first response from the BP App didn't go through for some reason, but i'm also sorry you've had to go through this.  It's terrible.  We currently know of at least four people that contracted with Rich Brooks and STL Flips that are having significant issues.  

Our story is very similar. Plus i'm an attorney and that still didn't deter him from running off the job, significantly damaging the property in various regards, and attempting to do unpermitted and utterly unacceptable work.  

For anyone looking to file suit, you should know that the address he and several other individuals use as their company's registered place of business at 2926 Salena St. is gated and the people that you hire to serve the lawsuits ("process servers") cannot get to front door of the buildings to actually serve the lawsuit (perfecting/effecuating service) - so many people give up when the process server is repeatedly unable to serve them with the suit and they get tired of paying the court to reissue the paper work and paying the process server.  This is according to court records available through CaseNet, which you linked to above.

I'd be interested in speaking with you to compare notes about our experiences and to see if you spoke to any of his references.

I hope you're able to get your project back on track and that this doesn't ruin St. Louis for you as a potential market.  

We're 2/3s through a rehab and are wondering if there are certain add-ons or repairs that will help us get the highest appraisal we can.   Besides the obvious (comps., sq footage, bedrooms, baths, etc.) what, exactly, are appraisers looking for that might help us squeeze out a few extra thousand on the appraisal numbers?

The question started with respect to landscaping and water heaters in a duplex.  We've replaced the main stack and plumbing throughout the house.  The water heaters are old but functional.  Will an appraiser notice the water heater - even then, would it have any baring on the final appraisal value?

I'm curious what people have found worth the extra investment and have paid off in terms of getting a higher appraisal for BRRRR purposes.

Thanks!

I'm looking for recommendations for a plumber to replace a few water heaters in St. Louis.  Please let me know any recommendations.

I live in St. Louis and although i'm not too seasoned, I don't look in North County as a rule just because the areas vary so much.  I'll probably get some crap for this for people saying there's money to be made there - which i'm sure there is - but as an out-of-state investor you're at a lot of risk investing in North County.  Some out of state investors get taken advantage of with No. Co. properties (like they do in Detroit, for example).  Here's a link to the homicide map for St. Louis:

http://www.stltoday.com/news/multimedia/special/st...

The place you'd most be familiar with in North County is Ferguson, Missouri - which has gotten a lot of attention since the riot and some bigger chains stores have come in   Don't get me wrong, there are good areas, but you might have to drive through some really rough areas to get there.  What you also may not be seeing is the true condition of the properties and why someone is selling three houses that make 2% a month.

Solid post @Scott Schaecher - this brother of yours sounds like a smart, handsome dude. 

Do your diligence folks.  It's amazing what you can find on or about contractors, tenants, handymen, etc. we hemmed and hawed over whether to role the dice on this guy.  If it went as promised - we found our guy for the next few deals. If it fell apart, we arranged the contraxt where if the contractor flaked on us, we wouldn't be too far behind on finishing costs when we hired another contractor (unless the materials disappeared with our original guy).  For now, we're somewhere in the middle, the things he promised are getting done, but slowly, so we're frustrated we don't already have tenants in there. Most people don't know that in many counties and states, civil court records (usually not the documents involved in the lawsuit) are easily accessible online to the public. So do your homework - a little extra effort now can can save a lot of time and expense later.

Scott also didn't point out that we're both married with little ones and while our wives have not been directly involved in the day to day of this project, they're extremely supportive of efforts and have gotten into listening to the podcasts etc. That support and joint interest has made this a lot easier. Plus, if my wife says "wow, that's ugly." I can just say "Scott did it." 

@Jason Chen Not trying to be defensive on our numbers, neither of us will call this anything close to a home run or a big win.  (Debacle, sh** show, quagmire are words that came to mind at various times.) And when I was reading this for the first time I was thinking "please tell them we didn't end up paying $105!". But you make great points and the education has been worth every extra penny. We did make a few upgrades that may not have been necessary if we were going to flip it and chose more tenant proof products. We consider ourselves pretty handy and have been around a decent amount of construction in our few years, so maybe we were over confident but there were tons of things we didn't see or thought were salvageable that we'll know to be looking for in the future. And I think this is also the value of having an experienced partner that we hear on the podcasts. These are all things they might've been able to point out.  But, like we learned from G.I  Joe: Now we know. And knowing's half the battle."

Stay tuned. Hopefully Scott's next post will be about a great finished product, an intact relationship with a contractor we'll use again, a better profit than we anticipated, and most importantly how he refrained from murdering his little brother during the project. 

(Sorry for any autocorrect typos)

Unfortunately in these kinds of cases, unless it's a large commercial project, it can be hard sometimes to find an attorney to take the case (particularly someone who specializes in that type of work) because of the  time and cost involved as compared to the total amount of recovery.  You'll have a hard time finding someone who may be willing to take it on a contingency fee if that's what you're looking for (where they get a % of your recovery), because it can take a while to get to the point of collecting on from a contractor (if ever) and the attorney's 33% of your recovery may not justify the time and expense to get the case to that point.  Likewise, it can take a lot of time and work to litigate one of these cases if you're paying the attorney hourly, ultimately making it cost prohibitive for you.  Sometimes your contract will have an attorneys' fees provision, though.   Also, you can look up the name of the contractor on the Missouri courts' website and see how many times they've been sued and how many judgments they have against them.  It's possible that even if you sued them, they may not have the money to pay you and collecting on your judgment will take years. 

If you send me a message with a few details, i'll see if there are any names of people i know locally that might be able to help or that handle this sort of work.  But as a disclaimer because i am an attorney, nothing i provide here should be taken or considered as legal advice and i am not advertising my services, but rather only commenting as a fellow investor who happens to know some attorneys in the area that i might be able to put you into contact with.

I'm looking for a reasonably-priced landlord/tenant attorney in the Madison, Wisconsin area to handle an eviction and breach of contract action for an out-of-state investor in St. Louis, Missouri.   Any references are appreciated.