All Forum Posts by: Cory Johnson

Hi BP,

I have a fix and sell project in St. Paul and I'm looking for a good drywall/taping crew that can handle a moderate sized job and that won't price gouge me. It's about 130 or so sheets worth of work along with some skim coating/repair work. Please let me know if anyone has suggestions. Thanks!!

Hello BP! Hopefully this is the proper forum for my question... I'm wondering if anyone has recommendations for an affordable garage builder in the Twin Cities that you've had good experiences with? We're also looking for recommendations for someone who does decent and reasonably priced concrete work. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

@Jesse Herndon Sorry for the delayed reply. I haven't checked in for awhile. We broke even on this project. It took our GC double the amount of time he said it would to finish the remodel and so when we finally got it on the MLS we were in the winter market. We may have been able to hold onto the property until spring and turned a small profit but we really wanted to move onto the next project ASAP so we decided we were fine with just breaking even and using it as a learning experience. We plan to GC the next one ourselves. No idea if staging would have made a difference or not but I suspect in this particular case we likely would have taken a loss had we paid to stage it.

@John Woodrich We had hoped to have it on the market in early October but the rehab took longer than expected. Just went live last night. Hopefully it moves quick!

@Christopher Phillips

@John Woodrich

Thanks for the input! I have the same concerns about virtually staging furniture. People might be disappointed when they walk thru. I think we're going to skip staging entirely and just price the property aggressively so we can move it quick. We'd like to have it sold before we start getting snow.

My business partner and I are wrapping up our first ever fix and sell property in St. Paul, MN and are getting ready to put it on the market. I'm curious about people's experiences with virtual staging and would like some opinions on whether people who have done it found it to be comparable with physically staging a property with regard to effectiveness. Do people ever have adverse reactions to walking through an empty house after seeing it furnished in photos? I actually haven't even looked into costs yet but I'm assuming it's far less expensive than actual staging. Any thoughts or opinions would be much appreciated!

I'm interested in chatting with investors who like doing business in St. Paul. Almost everyone I know has no experience with or much knowledge of the SP market and prefer to stick with Minneapolis or areas west of SP. I'm particularly interested in those who have worked on CAT 3 homes and had success. I understand it can be a pain in the butt with all of the code requirements (also heard that they some slight changes for the better recently or they're going to?) and so a lot of people steer clear but in my mind that means less competition. Sounds like a possible opportunity to me.

I'm also looking for recommendations on some great real estate agents who know the St. Paul market inside and out and have experience working with investors. Thanks!

Thank you for the warm welcome, everyone.

@Tim Swierczek - I will definitely do that! I attended one meeting last year but it was organized by some other REIA forum... can't recall the name but it was at a Davanni's. Seems like real estate investors in MN really like Davanni's. :D

@Amber Gonion - Thanks! It does seem like everyone is super helpful here. Awesome. And yes, I'd be down for meeting for coffee. I'm wrapping up a remodel on my home (it's going on the market in the next week or 2 - decided to do the work myself and won't be doing that again) and it's consuming my every waking moment but after that let's set something up. If you want, shoot me your number in an email.

@Dmitriy Fomichenko - Very good info, thank you for that.

And thank you to everyone else who responded. Good to be here. Maybe we'll have the opportunity to work together soon.

Hi BP! I've lurked a little bit here in the past but decided to create an account and get active. I figured a proper introduction would be a good way to get started.

My name is Cory and I'm in Minneapolis, MN. I've been looking to get into real estate investing for some time now but I'm ready to finally pull the trigger. Timing isn't ideal - at least in Minnesota - but I figure real estate is just like any other industry: regardless of market conditions there is always money to be made if you're creative, have a plan and the right strategy.

My business partner and I have the creativity part down but the plan and strategy are items that we're working on. We hope to be ready and in a position to start making moves within the next month or so. Anyway, glad to be here and I look forward to meeting some like-minded people and soaking up as much information as I possibly can.