All Forum Posts by: Crystal Chang

@Lauren Lockett

Thank you!

But I live in California though.  It is almost impossible to find anything that will cashflow around my area unless I put a 42% downpayment.

@J Scott

@ J Scott

Btw, so that you know Scott, I'm a big fan of yours and I purchased your book on Amazon and it's coming this Friday.

This is the house in question.

https://www.redfin.com/TX/Houston/4731-Clover-St-7...

The bank wants $54,000 and the contractor says it needs $65,000 to get it to be rent ready. The ARV is $120,000. There doesn't seem to be much of a spread after factoring into account the rehab costs in my opinion.

Also, the contractor said the copper in the electrical have been stripped out and would need $18,000 to be installed in.  That that a fair estimate?  

I just feel his rehab estimates are a bit high.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Crystal 

My main worry as an out of state investor is if I want to get a property at a discount, the property would needs to be in some form of distress. I would then need to rehab it so that I can rent it out as a buy-and-hold.

My main question is how can I prevent myself from getting "taken to the cleaners" by the contractors that I will need to hire to rehab the place? I know I need to get 3 bids, but even then, how do I know the contractors are using the materials they had promised to use and not just the cheapest materials to increase their profits?

Once again, any help from the investing community would be great!

Thank you,

Crystal

Or you can just always use public transportation and then use that money as a downpayment on a rental property.  Afterwards, you can use the card flow from that rental property to invest in a second rental property, and then from those two, roll the cash flow into a third property and so forth.  In a couple of years, you will have multiple properties and can just live off of the cash flow they generate.  

@Ryan Dossey save the $5,000 and put it toward an investment property that cashflows

@Jay Hinrichs

  Thank you for correcting my mistake.  I assumed a 10% vacancy rate even though my rental is located in a class A environment.  I'm not really buying it for cash flow as I don't need the money but more for an appreciation play.  If I wanted cash flow, I would just invest in a crappy area like Ohio.

I just purchased a property in Texas with my IB bonus from last year that cash flows $286 a month after taking into account:

Taxes - $2561 a year 

Insurance - $646

Maintenance - 10%

Management - 10%

Utilities - tenant pays for water, gas, and electric

Repair (Capital Expenditure) - 10% a year

Cap rate is 7.8% and this particular area is appreciating like crazy, at least from our analysis that we did at GS.

Happy Investing,

Crystal

Welcome Kevin!