All Forum Posts by: David Martin

@Dino Ganas May want to look towards a home with an ADU option (garage apartment/mother-in-law unit) on property. It's a modified version of a house hack, essentially. Let's you and the fam live as a group in the main house with a portion of costs covered by that rental door over the garage for now. Use the $31k towards the house described. Take the funds saved from discounted life and the $11k from dad and start exploring options for a second investment.

@Michael Heisterkamp I mean his numbers here aren't insanely off the reservation, he's not accounting for any FML moments, but beyond that I just think he's organizing the acquisition and finance structure in a way that's way more risky than is needed for same-ish results, given the scenario he's running. Instead of paying $55k out of pocket to seller and some interest over 10 years, just to buy access to a seller mortgage that might become an instant pay situation, he could potentially just float an 84 month $50k personal loan (again, no math done here for contingent situations), use the $5k sweetener to cover closing costs at the title company, and just own the thing outright, with non-recourse money on the property. The month to month cashflow shrinks in this situation, and of course no reserves are mentioned for operating expenses, but from a purely acquisition oriented look, he could get started. Maybe a few years out he gets a little appreciation and some loan paydown and can get himself refi'ed in to a better situation with a proper like 10 year mortgage on the thing, but as nuts as it sounds to do what I just said, I'd still consider it a better approach than the sub-to strategy on this one particular scenario he's flushing out.

@Tony Roberts So, market value of the property is $50k, and you're willing to pay $60k for it in interest and a sweetener. Am I understanding your scenario right?

I'm expecting the next area of town to bubble up will be along the 249 corridor once the "Aggie Expressway" finishes up that links Houston direct to the Navasota/College Station area.

Edit: Forgot to mention this is relative to Houston area.

@Jay Hinrichs Thanks for the PSA post. I've seen some of his YouTube, but since I've not had him in my sights as a person to work with, I've never really looked in to him to determine his legitimacy. Goes to show the value of doing some background checking.

@Jason Hirko In this particular case it's more of a dry creekbed/seasonal stream that carries the rainwater for the neighborhood downstream to a larger perennial creek as a function of watershed drainage for the neighborhood. It's function is primarily the same as a stormwater runoff conduit would be in most of the suburban neighborhoods in the area. I've done a pretty deep dive on research for the flood events, and feel quite comfortable that it's ok in that respect, this is more with just dealing with how to rebuild what was lost in the past and prevent it in the future. As mentioned, we've determined pretty well that managing the roof runoff in to drain pipe that leads the water to this side creek will prevent the major loss of future earth via erosion, but we still have the angular nature of these crevices that will continue to erode naturally if not managed, so I'm more dealing with how to go about backfilling it all without losing too much of the backfill. Just trying to work out ways to shore it up so the freshly laid dirt begins to compact in place versus getting carried off during spring rains. We're looking to pull some of the pine trees from the mix of trees on the lot that appear to be choking out the light and that dropping needles that are choking out the natural grass to try and promote some surface grass to develop and tighten up the topsoil layers as a first step, and then begin backfilling these crevices as needed. I'm not worried about any sort of subsidence of the lot or anything, just dealing with some aggressive drainage issues that were never dealt with by the previous owner for the last 11 years, but likely got much worse from 2015-2018 time frame when there were a series of heavy rain events multiple times a year in those years.

I've come across a property that we're making an offer on, and one of the larger issues is that it borders on one edge with a creek, and it appears that all the water flow from the gutters were unmitigated and during heavy 2016/2017 rain and hurricane time frames, has essentially eroded away about 10% of the front yard in the form of large crevices from the base of the house gutter pipes toward the creek. A few trees will likely have to be removed because the washout has stripped earth from a good part of the roots, and they are likely to fall over now. Those seem easy, just having them removed. We've already planned to use corrugated pipe to properly manage the water straight from the downspouts to the creek, so no further issues arise...

What I'm looking for are some DIY ideas on how to go about shoring up the lot edge near the creek so I can start back filling these crevices so there is even ground out to the edge of the lot again. Any ideas are welcome.

Your potential advantage here over a younger person is you have access to 55+ communities that you can house hack, which if the numbers work out and the HOA isn't a micro-kingdom, is just as viable.

@Kelly Andrus Do a little work to know what you're looking for, then put it to paper and then go to meetups and hand it out with contact info. Drive the area you're looking to do some units in and call a few of the "we buy houses" yellow signs in the area that you find and tell them you want to be on their buyers list, and then send them the same paper so they know what to send you.

@Matt Stricklen I've been contemplating the same question, but from the hacker side of the equation more so, and I think I've worked out some ways it could work in an equitable manner. My notes for it aren't nearby right now, but we should talk about it later. At a 50k view, it's built around the BRRRR framework with each party playing particular roles in each step of the process.