All Forum Posts by: Garrett Hogan

I've been in your exact situation before. Paying $450/month for a car at 19 years old is not a wise decision especially once you factor in insurance and other costs. I applaud you for having the foresight and thinking about buying a house at such a young age. My advice would be to buy the most reliable car with the lowest amount of miles that you can afford to buy with cash. 

Kevin I would recommend a BRRR strategy as well. You would need to acquire the property below market value to make this work. If it were me, I would lock in private funding from a HML or a friend/family member for the downpayment. When you refinance out you can pay back the private money lender and own the property with zero money out of pocket. A couple things you want to be cautious of:

1. Make sure you have figured out what your strategy for repaying the private loan is before you close. This will suck your cashflow out of the property, so you would want to get it repaid asap. You could inflate rehab costs (within reason) and use money leftover from the bank draws to pay off the lender. You could also use a mix of your own money and money pulled out from the cash out to pay it off.

2. Make sure you borrow enough money from the private lender to not only fund the downpayment, but also give you enough excess money for holding costs to get the rehab started and pay the carrying costs. 

3. Look for a bank who will convert the commercial construction loan into permanent financing. This will save you the extra costs and fees from having to do a refinance and paying more closing costs. Just refer back to #1 and make sure you have a plan for paying back the private loan if you go with this scenario. 

Thanks everyone for your input!

@Corey, Send me a PM and Ill add you to my wholesale list. I mainly focus in eastie, southie, cambridge, and somerville, but I do get passed some quincy deals every once in a while. Ill send them your way when I get them. 

I am currently working on securing a deal for a 9 unit condo new construction building in the boston area. The building will be 4 stories tall about 12k square and will require an elevator. The elevator will have a roughly 8x8 concrete block shaft and elevator inside. Trying to figure out a good ballpark cost for the pre-lim budget.

Does anyone have experience building an elevator of this size? What did it cost you?

+1 on Ricky's post about sprinklers. They're most likely gonna make you install them as well as a central fire alarm system for the building. ($4-6k) The good news is, if they do require it, you'll find out during the plan review. I would definitely getting some sprinkler bids ahead of time though so you're not scrambling.

I use TLO. $1 per search $10/advanced search. Pretty cheap

Michael,

Are you looking for a contractor to come in and give you estimates so you can estimate repair costs for deals that you plan on wholesaling? Or are you doing rehabs and need a contractor to give you an estimate and potentially plan on using them to complete the work?

If its the former, I foresee contractors getting irritated if you keep walking them through houses and then never giving them any work. If you are solely looking for repair estimates, I would suggest finding a good contractor and paying them a small fee to do the estimates for you. This way, when you are ready to rehab yourself, you will have a good idea on the costs and will have also built a good relationship with a contractor.

I grew up in Rhode Island, so I am pretty familiar with the Providence markets. IMO, the only places in Providence I would buy in would be the East Side and Federal Hill. Federal Hill as close to Atwells as you can. As you start to get further down the hill, it gets sketchier.

Private Money Lenders, or banks?