All Forum Posts by: David F.

We own 3 rental properties in California: 2 condos and 1 single family. All three are in our own names. We have primary insurance on the single family, but the condos are covered by "walls in" insurance from the HOA. We also have a personal umbrella policy that we were told would cover us for liability for all three properties.

We have been shopping around for lower insurance rates, and was told that our umbrella policy would not kick in on the condos until the primary insurance paid the first $500,000. Since we do not have primary insurance on the condos, we were told we would have to pay the first $500,000. Is this correct?

What do you recommend we do to insure our 2 condos for liability? We were a little scared to find out that we have basically been uninsured on our condos.

Thanks for any advice!

 Thanks Sue! Totally agree....Time and cost of a way of sneaking up on you!  I think that's what we are most afraid of. Just a bummer because it feels like we keep trying to find the right home to begin our flipping adventures and we continue to strike out. The dream lives on though –our goal is to find something this year to do as a flip. The cash flow wouldn't work for us as a rental unfortunately.

Thanks again for the advice!  This place is so great to really get an unbiased gut check which we definitely need!

Thanks, 

David

 Thanks Rod – totally agree. We've never done anything like this before so want to make sure the payoff is worth the risk. We were more excited before we started putting pen to paper in the budget and realized that we're getting up into the $250,000 range based on just our estimates.  But we weren't quite sure if that was just a function of our inexperience in a project this size or not. We have a lot of other remodel experience but nothing as major as putting on a second story. Unfortunately as a rental, the numbers don't work --we would be losing money every month at its current size.  Starting to feel like this might not be the right one… :(

Thanks again!

Thanks Jessica! We think that ARV is realistically 675. We could potentially get up to 700 but it means we would probably have to let it sit longer. 650 is kind of our worst case scenario if for some reason interest rates go up or the market slows by the time we are able to complete the project. Thanks for being willing to help share knowledge - will PM you.

Hi BP'ers -

We have been searching for some time for an opportunity to do our first flip here in Oregon.  Inventory seems to be tight and we have yet to find that great deal.   However, we came across a recent listing for a 1 story house, 1800 sq ft in a great neighborhood with predominately 3K+ sq foot houses.  

Per the city ordinances, we can add 1,200 sq feet through a second story addition.

When we do our spreadsheet for all of the estimated expenses - construction and carrying costs, etc., we are coming up with a cost of $250K.   Are we estimating high?   

Included in that cost is some remodeling of what will be the first story - new kitchen and updated bathrooms, flooring, etc.

We think we could get the property ideally for $375K and it would be worth anywhere from $650-$700 when done.   $650 would mean we are basically losing money/barely breaking even if our estimates our right.    

Any thoughts/ideas from folks who have done this?

Also, anyone got any good recommendations for reliable general contractors in this area?

Any help is greatly appreciated -- thanks in advance!

David

Hey Andrew -  

We made the jump from Walnut Creek to Portland, OR a few years ago and never looked back.  Part of the primary reason we left was cost of living.   We were able to buy a beautiful house just south of Portland in a neighborhood with great schools for essentially the same amount you would pay right now for the house we still own in a not so great area in Concord.  We also recently bought some land to build a vacation home in a great resort area a few hours from here.  That likely would never have happened at the rate we were going in the bay area.   It is true that salaries are definitely higher in the Bay Area than where we are now but it doesn't feel proportional to the difference in cost of living (just based on our experience).   We still own property in the Bay Area so we keep an eye on the market there.   When we see what pricing is like in areas that would be comparable to where we are living now with great schools like Danville, San Ramon, WC, Lafayette, Moraga...we really can't imagine ever going back.  

I agree with the other posters that mentioned the fact that once you leave though it is very hard to get back in and while there are certainly a lot of real estate opportunities here, California has provided us much higher returns overall in terms of appreciation on our properties to date. However, the cost of entry in Portland to buy SFR or even multi-family is WAY more affordable and we feel like ultimately will allow us add more properties here than we would if we were still in the bay area.

Best of luck as you figure out what might work best for you and your family!

David

Hi Fellow BP'ers,

Wanted to see if anyone had any recommendations for investor friendly realtors in the Portland area. We've been using Redfin to see SFR properties for fix & flip but would really like someone to work with more directly as our goal is to buy something this winter. Primarily looking in Lake Oswego and surrounding areas so would ideally love someone with experience in that market. But also open to other areas around Portland ...we just aren't as familiar.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

David

Hi Ian -

Is it written in your contract that you have to use your PM for repairs/turnover?   We're  located far away from our properties and use a PM to manage them.  We require them to get our approval for any expenses over $250.  We most recently got a quote for work for a turnover that we felt was exceedingly high from them.   We basically told them we felt it was too high and wanted a more competitive quote.  In the meantime, we had contacted some other folks on our own.  It's a little bit of a pain but it's amazing what you can do using things like Yelp, Angie's List, etc. remotely.  There is so much information out there these days and we found most folks with really good reviews to be very responsive (we didn't bother contacting anyone without good reviews).  We let the PM know that we could get basically get the same amount of work done for about 30% less and were ready to move forward with alternate plans.   Suddenly their pricing got a lot more competitive.  

We share your frustrations.  We've had a series of issues recently so we are actually in the process of trying to find a new PM.

Good luck to you!

David

Thanks JMartin!  Believe it or not we are having trouble finding folks in our neck of the woods so we will check out Andrew and see if he happens to venture out that way.   Glen sounded great but he doesn't go as far out as Concord/Walnut Creek. 

We talked to Stokely Properties -- anybody with experience with them?