All Forum Posts by: Gail W.

Here's my story and it proves I am not the sharpest crayon in the box but as I have always said I am a bull dog. Never give up.

I was raised by my Dad who kept me and my brother after being divorced from my Mom. Dad worked in a factory and tried to run a small farm. The farm failed just before the agriculture economy boomed in the early 70's and me my brother and Dad moved to town.

As long as I can remember I wanted to farm, but I had no money and Dad made it plain that he couldn't afford to send me to college so I went to work , and I had an Idea. I would buy houses fix them up while I lived in them then sell and go again. A live in rehab. In 1975 at the age of 18 I bought an 800 square foot 4 square for $4000 nothing down and 50 a month. Later that same year I bought an identical house for the same money and the same terms.

My uncle was a home builder and I had worked for him 2 summers and I was now working as a carpenter for another home builder. So I was learning some skills I needed. I fixed up house # 1 sold it for a profit then moved to house #2 and rehabbed it and sold it then used the money to buy house number 3. This was a 4 bedroom 2 story that I planned to stay in for a while, and I did until 1984.

Construction in my area got really slow in the early 80's and I needed to find a different way to make a living. I went to work in a factory in '84  and stayed there for the next 32 years. I sold the 2 story house that i wanted to convert to a duplex but had never been able to make it happen, and I bought a 2 bedroom fixer upper at auction and paid 4050 cash there seems to be a pattern here. The next year I found a farm 40 acres, and bought it for $2500 down and 20 year contract.

My plan was to build on the farm but it was very isolated and my wife was not happy about that. It so happened that a man out of the area owned the property adjoining and contacted me saying he was not aware the land was for sale and would I sell to him and I did taking a small profit. 

This started the search for my next farm and the next year 1986 I found 135 acres with a 3 bedroom house and 100 acres of old growth timber. I paid $8000 down and $6500 a year for 20 years. Interest was 9%. I rented the house in town. This was the first time I had ever rented a house. My tenant completely trashed the house in 9 months and I sold it to the church next door at a loss. They made a parking lot.

Back on the farm I started selling timber right away and in 1988 I bought another place 147 acres with 87 acres of tillable ground and a very nice 3 bedroom ranch house $25000 down 7% interest for 20 years. I rented the house on the first farm and the tenant there right off started selling drugs. I got them out and didn't rent anything else for the next 30 years.

I got divorced in 1993 and had to sell my farm that I loved, but I finally realized that the only money I had ever really made was in real estate. With my half of the proceeds for the sale of the farm I bought a house in town fixed and flipped, then another. I also bought my primary plus the 10 acres it sits on in '95. I flipped 3 more houses over the years and then bought 60 acres in 2007 which I still own.

I 2019 I got back into the buy and hold business. I first bought a mobile home on 4 lots, then a house, then a lot that I rent for a mobile home. In 2020 I have bought 2 houses.

I'm sorry for the long post but I am old and it takes time to tell the story.   

     There is already a sump pump installed, and the mostly dry comment was because the only wet in the crawl space is in a small ditch that goes to the sump pump. I will try charcoal. Thank you for your responses.

     I recently bought a house  for a rental. We noticed a smell when walking through the property that was something like mildew. The house was owned by an elderly couple and after the owners passed away it sat empty for about a year. The estate sent cleaners to the house and they shampooed the carpet among other things. The carpet was wet when we did our walk through. After painting most of the walls and cleaning our selves I placed a tenant, who commented on the smell. I told the tenant that the house had been empty and shut up for some time and after cooking and doing laundry and just living in the house the smell would go away Well it hasn't. The tenant is concerned and so am I. I have been in the crawl space and it is mostly dry. Also we had a home inspection and no mention of this.

     I wonder if anyone has dealt with a thing like this and if I could get some suggestions?

Comparing to my area, these rehab numbers are very high. Here you could have a contractor build a turnkey duplex on a lot you already own for not a lot more. That being said some of the numbers are not bad, for instance $13500 for the roof when it needs re framed and decked is not bad. I know there is a big difference in this rural area and the city of Madison but I would take a hard look at this and maybe consider getting a couple of different estimates before I would proceed.  

One of the banks I deal with is in Shelbyville, It is a branch of a bank from Charleston, They offered me a commercial mortgage for 20% down and 6.25%. 

I have worked with contractors for 36 years in my job. I have done 2 rehabs on my own this last year, and I believe that to find a contractor you can trust from long distance is going to be very difficult. I don't think it's always that they are dishonest , (although that is the case a lot of the time) but the good contractors are always busy and looking for ways to maximize available time. This is saying nothing about RE agents. I feel like to find one you can trust the odds are like trying to beat the house at slots.

In my mind the only way to invest long distance is to be able to fly in every 5-10 days to check on things and even then a lot can go wrong in 10 days time.   

The last company I worked for as maintenance manager had the same problems when I came in. I found an app called "Hours Tracker." It is a very simple system where you can set up jobs and track time with a place to add comments. We also developed a work order system where a report is generated listing all the work orders. I would prioritize the work every morning then print work orders. I emailed the contractors a work order and in order to get the invoice paid they would have to write what they did on the work order and any parts or material they used and send it back with their invoice. I usually could schedule two employees and any contract work in less than an hour every morning.

In my own mind I would question how much the managing broker knew about the situation. If it were me and I wanted to move forward I would have my attorney review every document and detail of the situation, out of an abundance of caution. 

@Justin Wilcox

Look at "First American Mortgage solutions, Proteck Services, or Clear Capital. There are quite a few more.

@john 

@John Erlanger  Your posts here are abrasive and disrespectful. There is no indication that the OP wants to use cap rate as the only metric in his investment analyses. 

Furthermore @Steve Vaughan is a respected poster on BP. You can tell this is so by the fact that his up votes are 155% of his posts. I also am confident that he doesn't need me to defend him, but I am thinking maybe you should consider changing your approach. You would probably get much more value from this forum.