All Forum Posts by: James Haffner

Wow, Thank you everyone for the feedback it's really helpful. Although I really want to move forward and get my first deal under my belt. We decided to hold on the property and keep looking for something that makes more sense.

Hey everyone! i'm in need of your professional opinions. Any help would be great!

We managed to find a deal in the middle of Everett, Wa about a 5 minute walk away from the stadium, and a 5 minute drive from the community college. If your familiar with the area it's on Wetmore avenue.

The property was built in 1910.

its aprox 2300 square feet. 4 bed/ 2.5 bath

2 car garage.

The last owner of the property tried to make a duplex out of it so it has 2 kitchens. One of them needs to be ripped out because it's unfinished and honestly doesn't make any sense. it also has a basement room that I didn't get to look at, and an attic type room that's carpeted and has stairs going to it. The home has a lot of little quirky things that are strange and unlike anything I've ever seen. 2 closets in one room, a bedroom next to the kitchen, etc.

It needs a lot of work. Prior inspection, I know it needs paint in and out. Replaced floors (probably pergo) There are some rotted boards on the deck, and a huge chunk of wall that was taken out in one of the upstairs rooms. It needs some new windows, but some have been replaced. It needs to be cleaned with a pressure washer. Some of the floors slump and slant in a funky way. IDK if that's because it's old or bigger problems that IDK know about. I estimated about 40k in rehab costs and 5-6 months of rehab before we could rent it.

Fortunately, my father lives in the area who would be able to help manage some of the contractors because my fiancée and I are pretty strapped on time and in between det's constantly.

Numbers (the important part!)

The home is listed for 185k. We want to offer 170k

After a full rehab we are seeing homes this size in this area going for 280k-300k.  

But, we would like to rent it out for cash flow. When using the rental income calculator adding in 9% for a rental manager,  7% for capex, and paying $500.00/Mo. in utilities & insurance. We were able to come up with a cash flow of $300-400 a month charging a $2200/Mo. rent. I feel were using pretty conservative numbers, if your from Everett please let me know if I'm of my rocker!

Everett has an expanding community college that is also expanding there campus to take in college students from a near by University. They have seen a consistent 15% increase in students since 2011 when they had 20,000 students go through there door. The campus has tripled in size since I graduated in HS. So our plan is to offer the home to college students, renting out per room, if we did that we would be able to charge higher rents than what was listed. But if that wasn't within the confines of the law, we would lease it out to a group of 4-5 students who would pay a total of $2200/Mo. in rent and probably split the utilities up so were not paying for all of them. But our goal is to charge a higher rent, and offer the home for students. But there is a Navy base, and Boeing in the area if that doesn't work out. I feel the home is a bit to quirky for a family, but maybe I'm wrong.

I know this is long winded, let me know what you guys think.

Thank you!

Hey everyone! Things have been wild lately. But we managed to find another property that will cash flow after a rehab is complete on the property. We went and looked at it last night and are deciding our offer. I'm going to post it on the deal analysis forum to get your thoughts.

Also this is probably a critical piece of info I should have mentioned earlier. But the property is a bank owned property. 

Ill definitely be making a call to the county planning department to get more information about the property. What I find out will probably determine if I want to move forward or keep looking. 

If I do decide to move forward, what are the inns and outs of a private money lender?

I wish I could use the VA on it. The big obstacle with using the VA is that I have to live in the property for 2 years until I can rent it out. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to live in it. I think 8 months down the road would be the soonest I would be able to live in the home.

Thanks everyone for your responses! Very helpful 

My Fiancee have been looking for a good cash flowing property home for the past 2-3 months. We've been looking pretty religiously and haven't been able to find anything in our price range, or that produces the #'s were looking for. 

We happened to stumble on a duplex for sale next to a community college in Everett, WA. Thinking of a suggestion we received here on bigger pockets to find a home, and rent the rooms out to students we decided to analyze it. After we ran the #'s including $35,000 for a rehab ( although we don't know what the house needs we just went high) 9% property management, 25% down, and us paying for the utilities. We were able to calculate out a case flow of roughly $400.00 a month, after all the money that we put down it was a 6.51 cash on cash ROI.. Of course this is tentative and would be more solid after further research.

We contacted our RE agent who proceeded to let us know that the home is Cash only sold as is. 

to us it was a pretty big bummer, because it seemed promising with some sweat equity and persistance.

We were curious if anyone has found a way around thee kind of rules? and if so how? 

Hey! 

Im actually looking to buy a home in Lake Stevens. I was wondering the same thing which is what brought me to this post in the first place. But yea, I was looking at buying a 3 bed 1 bath and adding a bathroom. 

Im pretty new...working on my first deal. But something I always due to find value comparisons; is go on Redfin, and look at all the sale records for the past 3-6 months at a given value. That will tell me the square footage, bed/ and bath that are actually selling around that price range. 

hope it helps! 

Great Ill look in to that. Its still something I'm really curious about, I just don't want to find my self waste deep in mud on my first RE project. 

I apologize for not  responding I didn't get an alert saying anyone responded! 

I'm looking at a home currently that doesn't have a garage, it has a big room were the garage should be. The home is great other then that factor. Because of this the home is way under the average price of the neighborhood. I'm considering changing the room in to a garage. It would require taking out a whole part of the home, and putting a garage door there, ripping the carpet out, etc.

Has anyone ever done this? Is it even worth my time?

Thank you.

Iv'e been looking for a 3 bed 2 bath home in the lake Stevens, WA area. I've noticed the price of homes are high compared to the rents . I can't seem to find something that will fit the #'s I'm shooting for. I've ran across some 3 bedroom 1 bath model homes. I've found that you can find these at a much better price. I did some back of the envelope math and found that the value of adding a bathroom compared to the cost of adding the bathroom could make it a solid investment. Has anyone ever used this model? If so, what were the road blocks that they found? What are things that I should think about before doing something like this? Thank you!