All Forum Posts by: Eran Greenburg

Great tips. thanks!

Cant seem to find much. Anyone know some?

if you can't itemize then how do you know when certain things are over budget so that you can improve the process in future flips? Eg. If tile was budgeted at $1,000 and ended up costing 1500 then you would never know so you couldnt improve that budget for the next flip. This is also useful in determining labor costs per  job within the house , not just materials. For example I could see that actual electrical work  costing x dollars and I would use that to help shop other contractors if needed. We run several houses at a time so comparatively speaking, looking at just one house would be much easier

This is really two questions.

1. How to best track costs of a project and compare with budget (what process/software do you use). I think Quickbooks calls this "job costing":

I get a bunch of receipts then need to somehow connect the dots between what the project was estimated at, and what a t-elbow goes to (e.g. flooring, plumbing, appliances, etc..) This seems tedios in general with so many items being bought.  Hoping theres an easier way to track this.

And considering I don't even have a system for tracking, but wondering if Quickbooks is good because of the receipts, and accounting all built in.  I think their online version is pretty stripped down, and besides,  at $40/mo, I'm looking for alternatives.

2. How crazy does it get to do this when you have 2+ rehabs going on at the same time? esp when people are purchasing parts for two houses on a single receipt.  I kinda want to prevent split purchases like that, and maybe setup a unique bank account for each, but that seems to be overkill and a headache.

I looked at MSProject but not sure where it starts/stops with regards to accounting stuff.

Is there an easier way to manage multiple projects?

Ultimately, I think quality comes down to vacancy rates no matter the strength/weakness of the economy. I may be way off here.

With that said I really dont know how to tell how "good" a neighborhood is to invest in.

So is the best way to understand a market to look at comp rental rates in Craigslist?

http://www.loopnet.com/xNet/MainSite/Listing/Profi...

The agent seems to have a few of these.

I think that makes it simpler for me though to use cap rate, not only because I would be using all cash to buy, but because it helps me evaluate the properties independently of other factors, like how good their loan is. 

I would think CCR would be a better predictor of wealth growth/loss right? E.g. I invest all my money, $50k + loans, into properties that net me $12.5k a year (25% CCR). The next year, I take that $12.5k and get another property to do the same again on a single new property which nets me another $3k a year on top of the $12.5K from the first properties. My wealth is growing by 25% per year because Im leveraging, instead of buying all cash; but even then Id imagine the number might be close to 16% on these properties (of course you also have an inflation factor of 1%-3% too on top of that). Thats pretty insane

Can you point me a thread or two on how to go about locating these? hopefully not too broad of a question

Right now, I am lending to a flipper, but assume if I started flipping myself, this would be the easiest way to get these kinds of deals? or are there other ways?

Whenever I look on real estate sites like Loopnet, max cap rate is going to be like 8% in my area (probably for low vacancy stuff at that).