All Forum Posts by: Geena Bouche

Excited to meet other local investors!

Hey! I’m a new investor and I look forward to joining! Thanks for putting this together.

wow @Brian Miller that's all great advice, thank you! We're planning on doing a lot of this, but I specifically love the note on putting more money into the front yard. It was ignored by the previous owners and I have my landscape designer working out a plan to turn it into a fully enclosed private oasis perfect for a morning cup of coffee. Extra seating areas, score! I'm contemplating some ship lap or trim on some of the walls, but that's lower on my priority list compared to some of the other awesome updates you mentioned. Thanks again!

My husband and I just purchased a 1957 single family 3br/1bath home with a detached garage and large backyard. We're looking to BRRR it. It came in pretty good condition, but we're looking for ways to increase its property value for when we refinance it. We're currently working with a landscape designer to make the front and back yards pop because they came pretty bare. We don't have the budget to do a full kitchen/bath remodel but are looking for tips for a budget friendly remodel. We'll be converting the detached garage into an ADU as well. Any advice is helpful, thank you!

Thanks @Dmitriy Fomichenko! It was a super exciting way to start my real estate investing journey :)

Investment Info:

Single-family residence fix & flip investment.

Purchase price: $865,000
Cash invested: $200,000
Sale price: $1,000,000

An accidental flip! We replaced the original heater units and painted the interior. We were about to put the house up for rent but a Ventura local reached out to us offering to purchase it.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We originally intended to convert the home's detached garage into an ADU and rent out the ADU and the main home. This would turn a profit of about $1000/month which seemed like a good place to start with our very first rental unit. The fast sale of the house got us interested in the idea of flipping future investment properties.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

This deal came to us. We negotiated through the rental chat on Zillow (because she contacted us originally looking to rent it) and as soon as it felt real we met the potential buyer and our realtors to show her the house and write up our contracts. I recognize this was pure luck and we were in the right place at the right time.

How did you finance this deal?

Standard bank loan with 20% down

How did you add value to the deal?

We painted the interior and replaced the original wall heaters with newer units.

What was the outcome?

The house was extremely cute to begin with, but we believe painting the walls a very light grey with white trim really made the house look perfect. The buyer was super happy with it!

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Painting the interior house by ourselves (rather than hiring out the job) was a much larger project than we were anticipating. I will absolutely hire a handyman to at least help with the job in the future.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Our Realtor is Toni Guy
Our Lender is Mark Johnson

Between the two of these amazing professionals we have managed to beat out over 13 offers on both houses we have purchased. They are extremely connected and amazing at communication. We also had our loan fully approved prior to putting an offer on the house (by recommendation of Mark) which immediately put us at the top of the list!

We have purchased two houses in the last 3 months. The first was meant to be a rental property, but we struck gold and someone approached us with an offer well above what we paid for. We ended up letting it go with about $135k more in our pockets to put towards our second rental that we closed on last week. We plan to turn this into a rental and convert the detached garage into an ADU. We have had a lot of success in the Ventura (CA) area because of low inventory and extremely high demand. The market is wild right now and can definitely be used towards our advantage.