All Forum Posts by: Gabe C.

Pittsboro is another spot on the come up. Lots of money being poured into Chatham Park, and its not far from Raleigh or Chapel Hill. 

@Ryan Groff Glad to hear someone is making it work! I'm remote, so haven't done major rehabs, but if the opportunity presents itself... 

I did find a great opportunity off Cary Parkway a year or so ago, but there were 35 cash offers and it escaped me.

Nice work! I've been trying to make something work in Cary for a bit, but cash flow is hard to come by, and those that do result in bidding wars. Are you actually cash flowing with those numbers or is it more of an appreciation play? Those numbers seem a bit high.

I made an inquiry and got this response. Couple more tidbits of info:

"Chatham Park will have cottages 800-1300 sq ft starting around $225,000, 30 cottages sharing the same green space. Contact Garman Homes for more information at [redacted for BP rules reasons]

Single family homes will start in the mid $300,000’s, Townhomes starting $187,000.

We are still working to finalize our builder list and getting approvals from the Town of Pittsboro so we can move forward. We hope to announce builders, pricing, floor plans & the process Spring 2020. Then we will have more info on lot size, square footage, lots will be sold to selected builders. We will also have Information Centers in the Mosaic & the Vineyards Fall of 2020.

We hope to have Garman Cottages & several homes ready Fall 2020 and they will be located off Thompson Street in Pittsboro.

Chatham Park will be updating our website and send out newsletters once we have more solid dates & information to share."

@Steven Griffith Welcome! BP is definitely a great resource. 

I do buy and hold investing in the Raleigh area. Can't do coffee since I live in San Francisco now (I did go to middle school in Chapel Hill!), but feel free to hit me up in messages. :)

@Brandon Ellis

1. Everyone has different opinions on this, but the purpose of an LLC is to limit your liability. On your first house, you're not going to have a lot to go after, and it adds overhead to your costs (couple hundred bucks to set up and maintain every year, more if you use a good lawyer, which i would recommend). I set mine up after I had 3 places, and that felt about right for me. My lawyer recommended to get a new one every 250k of equity or so, but that depends on your risk threshold. If you're really paranoid about getting sued, it is good piece of mind, and you may want to do it sooner.

2. I started with just a down payment, as you mentioned. I just ran numbers from properties on the MLS until I felt like I could identify a deal when I saw one. I had an agent ready to go, and when I saw one, I didn't hesitate to make an offer. The market is high now, so there's lots of competition. Try to find other people making deals to see what is working for them. I won a bid against 30 other buyers last year by having a huge earnest money check and waiving all contingencies. It was a risk, but the house was newer, so there wasn't likely to be anything major wrong with it. There were bigger offers than mine, but they were loaded down with contingencies and had low earnest money.

3. Read, read, read. Listen to podcasts, etc. until you are so saturated with info that you are annoyed that you haven't started yet!

My property manager gets a bundle of 12 post-dated checks in advance for the year. The tenant is out of the picture for payments at that point, and our tenant pool is not the type to bounce. They all seem to like getting it out of the way. 

Looks like Charlotte is getting a new Amazon fulfillment facility... 1500 jobs. Not sure if this helps or hurts Raleigh's chances for HQ2.

https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2018/06/26/amazon-to-create-more-than-1-500-jobs-in-nc-with.html

I'd just get a handyman for something like that, but if you want an electrician, try Rapid Repair Experts. We had a great electrician, but this company bought his company, so he now works for them. We tried them as a result and they were very process oriented and detail focused. 

I went through the laundry list on my last acquisition... 

If you don't mind balloons, I had good convos with Paragon and Triangle Lending Group when I was last looking. I was also making progress with Crescom on great rates, but they had a sudden tragedy befall them (robbery/murders) that delayed things to the point where I had to break glass and look elsewhere. Horribly sad situation, but that bank was promising, and I'd recommend trying them.

I actually ended up getting great terms at Coastal Federal Credit Union, and I hope to continue working with them on future deals. There were a few hoops, but it turned out well, and their people have been great to work with.