All Forum Posts by: Javier Marchena

Yes, I will recommend Tile if you can afford it.

Looks better, attract better tenants and it is easier to clean. 

If you tenant smokes (I do not allow it either, but sometimes...) it does not burn.

Just use the $12,000, and use it to buy your first property. Ask all the questions you want and you will find plenty qualified RE investors here in BP happy to answer. 

Investors that are not going to charge you 20% and will be happy with your success. 

I charge 10% monthly fee and 50% of the first month rent. 

Reading other posts I believe I am charging too little for an initial lease up fee. I may try to bump this up to 70% in the near future. I do not charge for renewal of the lease.

Hi Victor, I am located in Winter Springs and also Buy and Hold/Flip in the Orlando Area.

Let me know if you have any questions or need some help.

I would say, it depends on your experience and your knowledge of general construction and maintenance.

If you can pick up issues and repairs values just by walking the unit, I would save the money of an inspection. Always take the worse condition.

If you don't know the value of the needed repairs, or you are not familiar with the repairs needed by just looking at it, I would say to pay an inspector. They will give you an idea of the issues and repairs you are going to need in order to get this property to the next level. (B-).

My thought is that a good inspector is worth the money. They get places where you do not want to get (attics, crawling spaces), they use infrared cameras to see inside walls, they will tell you if outlets have grounding, if AC is cooling, if Water Heater is missing a expansion tank. If you decided to get one, get a good one.

Great job Matthew. Keep posting your progress.

If I was going to keep this unit as a rental, I would re-pipe this whole unit. I know this is going to save me some headaches in the future.

Everything I can do now that the walls are open and no tenants there I will try to do it. Keeping in mind your budget, take a look at all cost effective repairs you can do now.

As a General Contractor, I will recommend you to hire a Contractor, even for a small cosmetic work (unless you do have a handy man you trust). Somebody that has a license and you can go after his license in case he tries something like that.

I have an investors making money out of the country.

He would like to have an income once he comes back to the US, so he is buying properties that he would hold for a rent income. He is not doing a flip. Just getting distressed propertied for a discount price, fix them and rent them out.

He buys propertied for around 40-50K. He puts 10-15K for repairs and then rent them at $900-$1000/month.

I find the properties, fix them up and get them rent ready at 15% of labor and materials. I cannot use a 50/50 split on this case because there is not going to be sale and it would be hard to put a price to the finished house.

Then, I charge him property management fees for the time he is out of the country. Once he comes back, he will take care of them.

Hope this helps you.

It depends on the investors.

For a flipper I go 50/50 split.

For the "buy and hold" investor, I charge 15% of labor and materials to fix the property. Then, property management fee once the property is rent ready.

@Michael O'Byrne

I am a RE Agent and got my Home Inspector License in FL. It is a good way to learn a lot of things to look for in a property, but that's it.

In very low income properties I do my own inspections, this gives me the idea on how much I may expect to pay in repairs and rehab. In more expensive houses I hire someone that is going to be thorough. I like to be there and follow him everywhere to get the filling on the amount of money is going to need.