All Forum Posts by: Elliot Criss

Hello all,

Thank you all for the commenting and sharing your wisdom! This community has been incredible already.

Hello all,

I am a new investor in the Charlotte area. I am looking to purchase my first rental property this year and would love to network with people in the area.

I am looking at SFH (3 bed, 2 bath) as well as duplex, triplex, and quadplexes. Ideally I would like a minimal rehab project and am open to the larger Charlotte area (Gastonia, Rock Hill, etc).

My ultimate goal is to master the BRRR strategy and build a long term rental portfolio. My immediate goal is to buy my first rental property this year, get my feet wet with wholesaling one property in the next six months, and better understand the market.

If there are any meets up or other networking events in the Charlotte area I’d greatly appreciate knowing about them.

Best,

Elliot Criss

@Tyler Watts I like the idea of keeping the Property Management element in their  for the future so you know your numbers. Thanks again for the great advice!

@Lecia Montague That definitely makes sense. Thank you again. 

@Jason E. Smith Thank you for the advice Jason. I was looking at rentometer for rents and plugged in the address of the duplex and it gave a wide range as I stated above. To be honest I thought they sounded high but I truly don't know the area well enough so thank you for stating your rents as a reference. I like what you said about the 50% rule. I've read a several blog post on this subject and whether it is a valid rule or more of an estimate. I am looking for long term investments and not so much on the quick cash side,  so I can appreciate the conservative thinking. I hope you have a good rest of your week.

@Curtis Waters Thank you Curtis. I will look into those meetups this coming week. I look forward to introducing myself in person. Hope to see you soon.

@Lecia Montague Thank you for the direction to meckcama.co. I will take a look at this. I was having a lot of trouble deciphering the county assessor report. I couldn't seem to find the yearly rate. As for the property management, I  plan on running that myself for my first couple of deals to understand what it takes and what systems I need in place to grow later on. Would you recommend still incorporating those rates into my analysis as of now. Thank you for your adivce.

@Tyler Watts Thank you for the comment. When you say you take care of Capex in the beginning, do you still include Capex in monthly expenses just at a lower rate? Let's say that the water heater, floors and HVAC need repairs but the roof just got replace 2 years ago. Instead of accounting for Capex in monthly expense as I did, would you incorporate water heater, floors and HVAC into upfront repair costs and then denote Capex at maybe 7% for monthly expenses? Thank you again for the feed back.

@Don Harris Are you referring to hard money lending? I am new to the concept, is that more of a short term deal versus long term? Thank you for the comment. I will definitely look more into what you are suggesting.

Hello Bigger Pockets Community,

My name is Elliot Criss and I am new to the BP forums. I have watched numerous podcasts, read numerous blog posts, and attended a few of Brandon's webinars. The last webinar was on deal analysis and Brandon challenged us to analyze three properties a day for a month. I have been doing this and have found an intriguing property that I would love to get some feed back on.

I was unable to figure out a way to incorporate the report I created for the property into this post so I created a spreadsheet below to give as much info as possible.

 The basics to this property are it's a 4 Bed 2 Bath duplex in West Charlotte out by the airport for you locals. The asking price is $120,000 but I believe that it could be purchased for lower considering its location and potential repairs. I put down a purchase price of $110,000 for this report.

I had some trouble figuring out the Annual Property Taxes for this property as well as others. I had a hard time understanding the reports from the county assessor. On Zillow, the website has the 2014 Property Taxes as $1,186 and Property Assessment as $61,500. I also looked up the average property tax for Charlotte which was around $1,400, however I set the Annual Property Taxes as $2,000 to try to be as conservative as possible. Any tips on how to analyze property taxes would be much appreciated!

I valued the property at $150,000 after $20,000 worth of repairs as that is the average price for a 4 Bed 2 Bath in this zip code (28208). I also estimated Closing Costs of $3,000. When I research Charlotte's average closing costs, I found it to be $2,400 but I wanted to be conservative.

I have a down payment of 20% at $110,000 price so the loan amount is $88,000 with 4.5% interest (I took the interest rate from calling my personal bank as a reference point). I put down 1 point charged by lender and loan fees/points are paid out of pocket. This is a 30 year amortized loan.

When researching the rent in this area it ranged greatly form 1,000 to 2,400. I also researched how much 2 Bed 1 Bath rent ran to get a better perspective and they ranged from $850 to 1,200. I settled on renting both sides of the duplex at $800 each to give me a total gross monthly rent at $1,600. I would also have the tenants pay for Electricity, Water & Sewer, and Garbage. I did not put down PMI since the loan is at 20% and no HOA fees apply. I added monthly insurance of $60 because I was not sure how to determine if that is applicable or not, so again I went conservative.

Below is an Excel Spreadsheet that I created to give some of the important numbers. I did go pretty conservative on things like rent, annual property taxes, repairs, vacancy and repairs/maintenance because this is one of the first deals I have analyzed. I believe the rent per month could easily be $1,800 and property taxes are probably a few hundred dollars lower. 

Any feed back would be much appreciated! I look forward to hearing from you all.

Thank you in advance.