All Forum Posts by: Heath Ryans

What exactly are you wanting that information for? Are you trying to see what rents are in an area?

@James T.  i thought your purchase price had an extra accidental zero on it, then i seen you were in cali. 

Here are my thoughts, some of which you may have already considered

1) Your doing a house hack on a 4 unit, that means you only have a max of 3 units rented out for atleast a year. Make sure you have the cash to cover the mortgage, while also accounting for the payments during reno period when you don't have tenants.

2) being near a university is great as long as your close enough. However, be aware that the school year runs August-May. that leaves you with roughly 3 months of uncertainty. Tenants could choose to stay there or they could leave for the summer. Be cautious.

3) Assuming that your posted calculation was for all 4 units rented out, that leaves you with approx $170 per door per month which is great (per MY market, i dont know yours) but as you said, in terms of COC it is low. But it depends on your market averages, it could be excellent. Im not sure.

4) i would bump vacancy up to atleast 5 if not 6%

5) This one is way more important that most of the rest but i just thought of it, how are utilities metered? can you make them separate for a reasonable price? can you afford to keep the lights on in all the units while you wait to fill them?

6) electric bill of $25/m? please tell me your secrets.

7) cap ex. budget for it. yes you may have brand new systems, but brand new systems break down with time just as everything else. you may not ever see the bills, but i would make sure i was prepared for it.

8) repairs, do not underestimate the the destructive ability of tenants. Those new windows might be top of the line but i bet they'll break just as easily as the old ones.

9) comps. i believe the general idea is if you can't find solid comps in the immediate area, you go with average price per sqft in the neighborhood. I'm not 100% certain.

10) be very sure that if you decide to go the 3.5% down route that the numbers still work. It makes for a great way to get into a property, but don't let it bite you on the back end when you want to move out and 4 units rent still can't make the payments plus cash flow.

I think that's all i have. I hope some of that helps. 

@Andrew B. If you estimate the ARV at 300k then buying at 187k does not leave much room at all. If you can get in a see it and come up with a good repair estimate, you will have a much better idea of whether or not you can get it cheap enough. If its been on the market for a couple months then the bank will likely take a little less. You're not likely to get a home run deal but you could still get a good one, depending on it's condition. Never hurts to put in an offer though. Worst they can do is say no.

@Patrick Flanagan

In Closing costs you will still have some title search,possible  apprasial, inspection, and maybe other fees. Id give it atleast 1% to be safe. Thats assuming the seller will pay the rest. 

lender fees, i dont know. I would make sure that applies to you and not just the last guy the agent did business with. Its possible. But i would make sure.

As @Sam Shueh said, be aware that the typical school year runs August-May. That leaves you 3 months worth of unknows if your renting to students specifically. 

Hey @Patrick Flanagan

just looking at it real quick, these are the three things that i see.

Closing costs- you have $0 allotted. you should expect atleast 2% of purchase price ($3,300)

You water bill is $10. Im assuming youll have that paid by tenants?

I don't know about the insurance costs. seems low to me but that could be correct for your area. 

@Isaac Moore Man i read your post while i was in class Monday and completely forgot to reply. I appreciate the recommendation. I'll check them out and see what they can do.

@Isaac Moore

I was just exploring the idea of using a VA today. I would primarily want to use one for sending mailers and keeping records up to date. I don't have the slightest idea how to go about it though. What service have you found to be most cost effective? I would likely need to use the same VA over and over again to keep a regular cycle of mail going as well as reducing the time to retrain on how i want my forms updated.

@Jay Hinrichs I have heard of the wonders of Property Radar. It hasn't made it to my side yet so i haven't been able to see if for myself. I am one of the few wholesalers in the area. I don't know of anyone else but im sure they're out there. So i don't have an overwhelming amount of competition like other wholesalers in your area.

The price points of the West coast always blow me away. Our average home value is 140k. You have to have a great deal to make decent money.

@Alex Bradley there has been several things

3 i made offers on , but they declined

2 were upside down to the point that short sale was the only option. i got those two back to back so i hadn't assembled a team to handle those yet. I think i've got it together now and I should be able to iron out all the details for that process Wednesday. 

2 had some weird title situation going on where the actual owner of the house didn't actually know it someone was trying to sell it. I have one of the owners phone number so technically i could call and make an offer but that house is a disaster and i just havn't decided if i really want it yet. I'm going to need a foundation specialist to advise me on that one before i put out a real number.

1 wasn't interested

1 just ghosted me the day i was supposed to go look at the house

and i have 1 more that we haven't set a date to look yet.

So that's been the first 10 i've looked at. one of which i found on craigslist. But that's all been since the 27th of July so basically 1 month and 10 houses. sooner or later a deal with break through.

When you go to drive, plan on spending two hours. Don't just go out and make a pass through one neighborhood. If that's all the time you can afford, then sure, use every bit of it. But if you can, put in hours and miles.

Everyone has their own systems but if this is what works for me. you need 2 apps (iPhone). "Map My Drive" and "Google Maps"

Map My Drive traces your location and logs miles driven and hours spent. Its very helpful for seeing where you've already been as well as streets you may have missed (go down EVERY street).

So I will drive with these apps open. When i find a house, i will pull up Google Maps and drop a pin on the house. you may have to drop a couple but sooner or later it will put up that house's address. Screenshot that, then recenter the map so it follows you again.

Drive around doing this and occasionally switch back to the Map My Drive app to make sure your not missing anything.

Once your done driving, go home and write down all those addresses you have screenshot and filter through them.

Something else I like to do is utilize the map creation function of Google Maps. I place pins on every house i mail to and you can save that map. It gives you an overall picture of the concentration of your mailings. So if I have an area that is very dense with run down houses than im mailing to, Im going to make sure i cover every square inch of that area. Whereas if i have maybe just a few pins in a big area, it's not going to be much of a priority.

Map My Drive can also be uploaded and overlaid onto other maps. So if you take your Map My Drive map and overlay it on your Google Map, You can really get a good idea of whats happening in an area.

Just some food for thought. Try things out. Do whatever works best you. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer what i can.

Hey @Alex Bradley

So were both in the newbie boat together, but I'll tell you what has worked for me. I just decided to do wholesaling recently. Its been about 1.5 months now and i have a current list of about 100 people im mailing to. I very much recommend driving for dollars as others have mentioned. You really learn the neighborhood and see all different kinds of housing. Right now, i have a typed letter than i just switch the addresses out on and i have a spot at the bottom to hand sign it. As of today, i have a response rate of 11.69% on my mailers. I looked at 8 houses in the first month of wholesaling. It works. You just have to put in the time.