All Forum Posts by: Charles Kao

dont see any listins on your site reiko but let me know if you have any

Lee. What are your guys charging a sq ft roughly?

I have one that does 100 percent financing for hard money. 5.5-6.5 points plus a 2-3 percent finders fee. Would not use in your scenario however

Is the 250 ARV or as is? Sounds like its not ever going to be a deal for you. Seller seems to lack motivation as well. The first time I ever lost on a deal I made a mistake of making a deal because it was what I could afford so I made thee offer bases on the list price. Don't look at the list price when you make the offer. Make the offer on what is best for you. I recently had a deal where the buyer wanted 57,000 and I just told him based on where he's at I can understand why he wants that price it doesnt make sense for me unless I offer 40 so I told him to use it as a Plan B. I wasn't trying to take advantage of him but had to make an offer that made sense for me. He accepted. Move on, while we always remember the deals we miss out on there are always more deals.

While my true exposure to real estate investing came in college I remember my first "real start" in real estate investing. My wife and I had just gotten married in October 2011 and the next year we made the difficult decision to sell our home on a short sale rather than sink all of our wedding money into refinancing it. We moved from a 2100 square foot 4 bedroom, 2 bath home with our newborn daughter to a 850 square foot 2 bedroom, 1 bath home that I bought with all out money from our wedding and I wrote a 9000 convenience check off of one of my credit cards. We bought it for 17,000 and downgraded from a home with a mortgage of 160,000. It was the best decision of our lives because we paid off that credit card balance in 6 months by making the same payments we were making on our house and we saved a ton of money owning our home free and clear. We were spending more time with our daughter and less time cleaning a huge house. We had utility bills and a HOA of only 300 a month and the rest of the money we saved to invest and renovate the home before we sold it a year later for a 26,000 profit.

How is your credit? One of issues I had was I was cash strapped as well but I had good credit and worked for a bank so I knew how lending worked. If you have good credit one of things you can do is write a convenience check off one of your credit cards for the downpayment. As long as the funds sit in your account for 2 bank cycles the bank will not consider it "borrowed funds" and you can use it for a downpayment on property or even buy a house. See my blog for details on how I did it!

My top 5

Trusting new sources for investing

Finding good reliable contractors that are cheap enough to make a deal work

Staying patient with buy and hold when its making a thousand or two a year versus thousands flipping but significsntly less risk

Balancing a job that pays very well with flipping full time which I would like to do but have 5 mouths to feed

Finding deals outside of MLS

My name is Charles. I started investing right before the 2008 housing crash. Today I own my home free and clear and working towards providing financial freedom so I can quit my comfortable sales job. I hit rock bottom when I was living in a half finished house I planned to flip after selling our home on a short sale.  With no plumbing, a newborn child, a wife and dog to feed I chose to change my future....and take a shower at my brother in law's house. Ill stop here but if you want to know what happens next, just ask..