All Forum Posts by: Eric M.

From what I have seen condos here don't really cash flow, but townhouses (which are also often condo) often can. But finding under 150K will be tough. You are likely looking at very small positive cash flow. Fine to get started but just be very wary of capex repairs that are needed. $200 a month positive cash flow doesn't go very far to cover appliance replacement or roof repair.

Good Luck

As people have indicated and you sense, finding deals is the difficult part about flipping. Well, the construction part is also hard and construction costs are way up too. And the financing can be hard or easy depending on your situation. Luckily, right now, the selling isn't hard but most everything else is.

In the OP you asked about wholesalers. Yes, Some deals are gotten through wholesalers. The problem is 99% of wholesale deals pitched to you will not be deals. 1% are awesome. There is a lot of crap to wade through and then a lot of competition for the good ones.

There are wholesaler Facebook groups and you will get a thousand wholesalers who claim to have deals and want to put you on their buyer list. That is fine. Just know that most of them will never find a good deal and they will pitch you many bad deals, deals they don't really control, etc.

Right now, since one of the avenues to find deals (sheriff sales) is closed, the competition for the good wholesale deals is nuts. Those wholesalers have dozens or hundreds on their lists so when they do find that nut, it is gone in a second or bid to crazy prices. MLS is very difficult but can be useful. The only thing keeping flippers making good money is the fact that prices keep rising. And who knows how much longer that holds.

Right now the formula is, buy a flip at a price that will make a small return. Manage it tightly and hope prices have risen by resale to make it a good return. Not a sustainable, great plan.

Your lead paragraph is an entirely meaningless, stand alone fact that provides no basis whatsoever for making any type of investing decision.

Many thousands of people are building new homes across the country. There always has been a need for new housing and always will be.

There is nothing from the recession 12 yrs ago that is " just coming to fruition".

If you want to build new houses and you have the skill set, its certainly one of many ways to make money in RE

You are giving the GP a virtual blank check with your funds. They can and will charge you for whatever fees they can dream up and you can't say ****

Search the forums, this company has been discussed dozens of times. Never good. They are simply almost never...deals.

#1 Starting bid means nothing. Lots of Ebay auctions start at $1. They don't end there.

#2 Tax Assessed value means little. Market value is the only value that matters.

#3- Do not underestimate the potential repairs. There are LOTS of homes that are worth less than $0. Be very careful of a house you have not inspected. 

#4 If you only have 10% of the starting price, you have no business playing at Sheriff Sales.

Well, I am not going to go through all that for you. That is your job. First, you obviously need a 3rd quote. But the bottom line number is not going to tell you a whole lot.

Go through it line by line and section by section to see exactly where it differs. Maybe 1 guy is ignoring the exterior. Maybe the materials are very similar but the labor is much more. Maybe one the their definitions of "rental grade" is different. Some people think rental grade means "the cheapest stuff you can find". To me that is stupid. I think rental grade is "put the heaviest duty stuff you can afford". There is cost now and there is maintenance cost later. How much you spend now has a direct effect on how much you will spend later.

IMO Always be wary of the lowest bid.

Yeah, they do not want to promote this. Most of their employees and many cashiers don't even know about it. 

You hit on one pain in the butt about the HD program. The give you a separate gift card for every receipt. This is so inefficient for HD. I have recommended they aggregate but they say no. I think they actually want to discourage the heavy users and pros from using it.

So you have tons of gift cards for a buck or 2. I am a HEAVY user of this program and since they basically ran it for April through November this year as a COVID bonus, I literally have hundreds of gift cards for Home Depot. It actually can get exhausting trying to use them. If feels good to go in and get something for free but to buy a $50 item, you often need to enter 30+ gift cards. It is only a scan and a PIN but a bit of a hassle.

So dig out your receipts from the past few months and try to enter them in the website. I don't know how long after the purchase you have to submit.

One more good thing and one more very bad thing about the HD rebates. The minimum rebate is $1 so if you submit a $2 receipt they don't send you .22 they send you $1. Menards doesn't do that. Also, you DON'T get a rebate on online orders or special orders. You have to go through the register at the front. So if you like to call in your large orders and pick up, it won't pay off.

If you buy appliances or doors or flooring, don't pay in the department. Tell them to print the invoice and take it to the front so you have a register receipt.

However, the worst thing is MANY MANY times I have caught them rejecting larger rebates for no reason. Keep a record of any $100+ receipt. Because they commonly reject all rebates over $10. I have no idea why other than they are dishonest. When you call and complain, they honor it.

I assume you are referring to, The percentage of units available that are unrented?

I understand how you might think this is a relevant statistic. They use it in commercial RE, etc. And I guess it could theoretically give you an idea of the desirability or demand for an area.

But for any single 3 unit building, it is entirely irrelevant. Just like the stat about population decline in Illinois is entirely irrelevant to your few units. People give far too much credence to these types of macro statistics when they are working on the micro level. At any point in time, a certain percentage of units will be vacant. So what? It is much more relevant how long it takes for those vacant units to be filled. If there are 10,000 vacant units in an area for a 5% vacancy rate. And next month there are 10,000 vacant units for a 5% vacancy rate, are they the same 10,000 units or different ones in the normal process of turnover? 5% rate is the same but it doesn't tell you much.

It might be useful for a 50+ unit because of the larger number and because those big buildings are where the data comes from. The data does not come from the small SFH and 2 or 3 flats. There is no way for that data to be compiled for the small buildings. Those landlords don't report data or vacancies to anyone. So no matter what vacancy rate you read, you have no clue what the real rate is for small buildings or SFH.

There is plenty of demand for rentals in all areas of Chicago. If the units are nice and market priced and in a decent area, they will rent. Period. Make your 3 units worthy of renting and they will rent. Regardless of whether the vacancy rate is 1% or 10% or 20%.

Apparently a unicorn sighting....I just got this email from this website. Maybe the information you seek is right under your nose.

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