All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Dudley

BP Folks,

I am looking for recommendations for an investor freindly real estate agent in the St. Louis area. I appericate any information you can offer thank you.

BP Friends,

I am looking for some advice on creating a joint venture for a fix and flip with a good friend from college. Profit will be split 50/50 I am trying to determine what I am missing or over looking.

We will be in the Saint Louis, MO area, but we will both be located two hours away during the week. We both travel to Saint Louis on the weekend and both our families are located in the area so we have a large support network.

We will both be bringing 50% of the down payment. We both have hands on knowledge of construction through small rehabs and he works as architect. We will be working with an attorney to get a partnership agreement finalized and signed.

We are going to use bank financing in the form of a mortgage and construction loan to buy the property and rehab it. We both have good credit scores and good jobs. Currently, I own one duplex which I live in. Below is a breakdown of what we would like to do.

Break Down example:

Loan amount 100,000 (30% down payment)

50,000 to buy property

40,000 for rehab

10,000 utilities, insurance, taxes, closing cost, etc.


Sell house for 140,000-160,000

We would also establish an LLC and the property when be under the LLC name. We will both be on the loan for the house.


Will a bank be willing to finance our funding strategy?

What precautions should we take in this partnership?

Thanks for all your help.

Peter, I wish I could make this. Please take pictures and share with us on how it went. Thanks for taking the initiative on this. 

My understanding is the federal law that created the VA and similar programs such as FHA define a residential home as 4 units or less. I highly doubt there is a way around this, your best bet would be to stick with a 4 unit.

The VA loan officer required me to prove that my home was built for residential purposes. The real litmus test is getting the loan officer to believe that the property was intended for residential use when it was built.  

To prove this I went to the planning and zoning office in my city. They would be the best source to determine what the house was built for.  For me it was very obvious my home is 115 years old and it looks like a house. Before you go to the city, I would look at the structure of the house, what kind of neighborhood is it in and try looking in older tax records. My property was rezoned in 2012, but before that is was listed as residential. 

My property is still zoned commercial too, I never had to change it back. Best of luck. 

The home I bought was a two story SFH but it had a kitchen on each floor. So I put up a wall and made it a two unit two bed one bath. It has worked out pretty well for me. In terms of finding these deals there are about 3-5 major commercial brokers in my area I would just go to their websites and see if they had anything that looks like a house. I found that these properties some how fall between the cracks on site like zillow. Not sure why.

Before I started by real estate investing education with Bigger Pockets it was the summer of 2013 and I was searching for that perfect house. After months of research I found the perfect house build in 1900 in a historic part of town. Armed with my VA loan I was sold on getting this property. For some reason in my area alot of real estate owners had rezoned their properties into commercial properties. It is also one of the reasons I found this house no one was looking at it because it was listed as a commercial.

I had read all the guidelines, YOU CANNOT BUY COMMERCIAL PROPERTY WITH VA LOAN. So I asked my lender is there a way around this road block and to my surprise there is. If the property your buying was originally built as a residential property and it is obvious that it is residential you can purchase it. I did have to get a letter from the city stating that they defined this house as a residential property it had just been rezoned. 

While I am new to bigger pockets I hope that this information can be used to benefit fellow members. Thanks.